scrimp

English

Etymology

Probably from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German schrimpen (“to shrivel up, wrinkle”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *skrimpaną (“to shrink”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut off”), related to Old English sċrimman (“to shrink”) and sċrincan (“to shrivel up”). Related to shrink, shrimp.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /skɹɪmp/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪmp

Noun

scrimp (plural scrimps)

1. A pinching miser; a niggard.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:miser

Verb

scrimp (third-person singular simple present scrimps, present participle scrimping, simple past and past participle scrimped)

1. (transitive) To make too small or short.

   Synonyms: scant, contract, shorten

   To scrimp the pattern of a coat.

2. (transitive) To limit or straiten; to put on short allowance.
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     For, as a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler.

   • 1886, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After”, in Locksley Hall Sixty Years After etc., London, New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 31:

     There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread, / There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead.

3. (intransitive) To be frugal.
   • 1904, Mark Twain, The $30,000 Bequest‎^[1]:

     “Oh, Electra, jewel of women, darling of my heart, we are free at last, we roll in wealth, we need never scrimp again. It's a case for Veuve Cliquot!”

   • 2020, Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half, Dialogue Books, page 334:

     They had to scrimp each month to afford it out of pocket.

Related terms

• scrimp and save
• scrimper

Translations

to be frugal

• Bulgarian: скъпя се (skǎpja se)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 过度缩减 (guòdùsuōjiǎn)

• Maori: matatoua

Adjective

scrimp (comparative more scrimp, superlative most scrimp)

1. Short; scanty; curtailed.

Anagrams

• crimps