scrimp
/skɹɪmp/
scrimp noun: a pinching miser; a niggard.
Noun
scrimp (plural scrimps)
Verb
scrimp (third-person singular simple present scrimps, present participle scrimping, simple past and past participle scrimped)
- 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.
- 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
- 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
Adjective
scrimp (comparative more scrimp, superlative most scrimp)
scrimp meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
scrimp in Tamil
- இவறன்
scrimp in Urdu
- کم, ناکافی
scrimp in Bengali
- অত্যধিক মিতব্যয়ী হওয়া, কার্পণ্য করা
scrimp in Malayalam
- scrimp and save, economize, skimp
- ലോഭിക്കുക, ലുബ്ധിക്കുക, ചുരുക്കുക, പിശുക്കുക, പിശുക്കുകാട്ടുക, അരിഷ്ടിക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
- scrimp in Kannada
- ಪಂಜೆಯಾಗಿರು, ಜಿಪುಣತನ ಮಾಡು, ಬಿಗಿಹಿಡಿ, ಹಿಡಿತ ಮಾಡು
Examples of scrimp in a sentence
- I scrimped and saved to buy my first house.
- All month he scrimped and saved until he raised the money.
- Just a few pennies made all the difference, if you knew how to scrimp and save.
Synonyms of scrimp
Forms of scrimp
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | scrimps |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | scrimps |
| present participle | scrimping |
| past participle | scrimped |
| past | scrimped |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more scrimp |
| superlative | most scrimp |
Origin of scrimp
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.
Words formed from scrimp
Words that rhyme with scrimp
Questions about scrimp
- What does scrimp mean?
- Scrimp means a pinching miser; a niggard.
- What is scrimp in Tamil?
- Scrimp in Tamil is இவறன். See Scrimp meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is scrimp?
- Scrimp can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce scrimp?
- Scrimp is pronounced /skɹɪmp/.
- What is the plural of scrimp?
- The plural of scrimp is scrimps.
Words near scrimp in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: scrimp (page history and authors); scrimp (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); scrimp (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); scrimp (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); scrimp (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); scrimp (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-scrimp.wav.
Cite this entry: “scrimp.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scrimp. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.