I really hate the "It's MY PERSPECTIVE" shit.

[MineralMan]

28. Niggardly and the word you used are quite different.

On the other hand, I don't believe I've ever used the word niggardly in any public speech or writing, and I write for a living. The reason is that it is not a word that is in most people's active or passive vocabulary. It's a perfectly good word, but the goal of speaking or writing is communication, and if the words you use are not understood by a majority of your listeners or readers, you will not be communicating effectively.

Audience is everything. Adjusting vocabulary to suit a target audience is a crucial part of public speaking or writing. That said, if I were writing to an audience that would be likely to have "niggardly" in their active or passive vocabulary, I wouldn't hesitate to use it.

As for your example, the word you used, which I will not use in this post, can refer to a bundle of sticks, as you suggested, or a bassoon, which is named for its similarity in appearance to said bundle of sticks. If I were writing about the history of wind instruments, I would use the word, and its Italian equivalent, in that writing. It would be understood in context to mean what I meant it to mean. The same word has a historical use in referring to cigarettes in England, again for the resemblance of a cigarette to a stick. That usage has largely disappeared, even in the UK, but you might hear it, or the shortened version, if you hung around a pub long enough.

Context, audience, etc. are all important in choosing words to use.

However, niggardly has only one meaning in English. Its root, "niggard," used to be in use fairly often, to refer to a Scrooge-like character who is stingy, mean, and a pinch-penny. It has no relationship whatsoever to the racial epithet. Nobody has ever used the word "niggard" as a racial slur. The same basic root has also produced the word "niggling," meaning a small, insignificant matter, as in a "niggling detail." The verb form, "niggle," is rarely used by anyone, but means to fiddle with small details, as in "Let's not niggle over the details." Most people don't have any of those words in their active vocabulary, and they wouldn't come to mind in speech or writing. Far more people, though, have them in their passive vocabulary, and understand the words when they see or hear them. People with very large active vocabularies most likely include all of those words, but may not use them unless they believe their audience will understand them. That "niggardly" was misunderstood in a particular setting is not surprising. I'd have chosen the word "stingy" in that setting, instead.

Word choices are made by the speaker or writer. If they don't suit the audience, the speaker or writer lacks certain skills.