How to use scrimp in a sentence

10 example sentences · noun, verb, adjective

Scrimp means a pinching miser; a niggard. Example: “The company scrimped on the design so badly that it ended up defective.”

Examples of scrimp by meaning

verbTo 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.

verbTo 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.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

More sentences with scrimp

I scrimped and saved to buy my first house.From the entry scrimp and save
All month he scrimped and saved until he raised the money.2020, Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half, Dialogue Books, page 104. From the entry scrimp and save
Just a few pennies made all the difference, if you knew how to scrimp and save.2019, Julia Elliot, “Hellion”, in Anthony Doerr, Heidi Pitlor, editor, The Best American Short Stories 2019, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt…. From the entry Dr Pepper
She didn't want this girl with the thin, scrimped face of a scared rabbit to be herself.1955, Don Marion Wolfe, Charles Irving Glicksberg, New Voices, volume 2, page 296. From the entry scrimped
Me hard earned three hundred that I scraped and scrimped for.1947, Paul Vincent Carroll, The Wise Have Not Spoken: A Drama in Three Acts (French’s Acting Edition; no. 308), London: French, →OCLC…. From the entry scut
Eleven children died during the forty-one day journey to Algiers as a consequence of the armators’ scrimping on costs.2005, Jennifer Elson Sessions, Making Colonial France: Culture, National Identity and the Colonization of Algeria, 1830-1851, University…. From the entry armator

Meaning of scrimp

noun A pinching miser; a niggard.
verb To make too small or short; to shortchange.
verb To limit or straiten; to put on short allowance.

Full definition of scrimp

Questions about scrimp in a sentence

How do you use scrimp in a sentence?: Scrimp is used as a noun, verb and adjective. For example: “The company scrimped on the design so badly that it ended up defective.”
What is a short sentence with scrimp?: “to scrimp the pattern of a coat”
What does scrimp mean?: Scrimp means a pinching miser; a niggard.

Adapted from Wiktionary: scrimp (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use scrimp in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/scrimp. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.