scrimp
verbEtymology From Scots scrimp (“meager”), from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German schrimpen (“to shrivel up, wrinkle”), from Old Dutch *scrimpan, from Frankish *skrimpan, 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”). Doublet of shrink, shrimp, and shrim.
1
Sometimes, With on To make too small or short; to shortchange.
- to scrimp the pattern of a coat
- The company scrimped on the design so badly that it ended up defective.
2
To 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:
- 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
To be frugal, whether to a reasonable and wise extent or to a miserly and unwise extent.
- “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:
- Derived terms
- scrimp and save, scrimp together, scrimper