Tight-fisted means very unwilling to spend money. A tight-fisted employer.
It is always a criticism, since being careful with money gets a kinder word. A tight-fisted person spends freely on the one thing they care about, which gives them away.
1adjectivetight-fistedVery unwilling to spend money.
“The tight-fisted management saved a fortune and lost the staff.”
tight-fisted is a quality.
Proto-Indo-European
*tenkt- — dense, thick, tight
Proto-Germanic
*þinhtaz
Proto-West Germanic
*þį̄ht(ī)
Old English
*þiht
Middle English
tight
English
tight
English, today
tight-fisted
From tight + fist + -ed. tight comes from Middle English tight, tyght, tyȝt, tiht, variants of thight, thiht, from Old English þiht, þīht (attested in meteþiht), from Proto-West Germanic þį̄ht(ī), from Proto-Germanic þinhtaz, from Proto-Indo-European tenkt- (“dense, thick, tight”), from Proto-Indo-European ten- (“to stretch, pull”). Cognate with Scots ticht, West Frisian ticht, Danish tæt, Icelandic þéttur (“dense”), Norwegian tett, Swedish tät, Dutch dicht (“dense”), German dicht (“dense”). The current form with t- /t/ rather than etymologically-expected th- /θ/ arose in Middle English under the influence of the etymologically-unrelated verbs tighten and tight, which come from a different Proto-Indo-European root (starting with *d- and thus regularly having t-).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA