»Wolfgang, you cheap bastard.

The lead paragraph of a music review appearing in today's Chronicle disparages Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:

"We think of Mozart as the prototypical musical wunderkind, but compared with Felix Mendelssohn, little Wolfgang was a piker. "

This irritates me. It's the lead in an above-the-fold front-page article of a major metropolitan newspaper, and more than 10% of the words (non-grammatically necessary) are misused. Specifically, piker, which is an American slang term meaning "a risk-taker, gambler; a stingy person". The synonyms are uniformly negative. Merriam-Webster goes so far as to suggest TIGHTWAD as the first synonym and linked definition.

I wrote a letter to the editor (and author). I'm well on my way to roaming the city with a MUNI transfer in hand, plastic bag full of books under my arm.

FOLLOW-UP:

received email from the author, to wit:

I quote from Webster's 11th Collegiate:

one who does things in a small way

"Slacker" would've served my purpose too, I suppose. But the locution I used is a common and venerable one in drawing a comparison unfavorable to a particular party (in this case Mozart): Compared to X, Y is/was a piker.

Thanks for reading my words so closely, though.