scrimp

plural scrimps

1. A pinching miser; a niggard.

present singular third person scrimps · participle present scrimping · participle past scrimped · past scrimped

1. sometimestransitivewith onTo make too small or short; to shortchange.

   to scrimp the pattern of a coat

   1 more example

   The company scrimped on the design so badly that it ended up defective.

   Synonyms: scant, contract, shorten, skimp

2. transitiveTo limit or straiten; to put on short allowance.

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

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

   1 more example

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

   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

3. intransitiveTo be frugal, whether to a reasonable and wise extent or to a miserly and unwise extent.

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

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

   1 more example

   “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!”

   1904, Mark Twain, The $30,000 Bequest

   Synonyms: skimp, scrape by

comparative more scrimp · superlative most scrimp

1. Short; scanty; curtailed.