The AI-powered English dictionary
plural scrimps
A pinching miser; a niggard. examples
third-person singular simple present scrimps, present participle scrimping, simple past and past participle scrimped
(transitive) To make too small or short. examples
(transitive) To limit or straiten; to put on short allowance. quotations examples
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
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., page 31
(intransitive) To be frugal. quotations examples
“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
They had to scrimp each month to afford it out of pocket.
2020, Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half, Dialogue Books, page 334
comparative more scrimp, superlative most scrimp
Short; scanty; curtailed. examples