stint
/stɪnt/
stint verb: to stop (an action); cease, desist. Also the misspelling of stent.
Verb
stint (third-person singular simple present stints, present participle stinting, simple past and past participle stinted)
- To stop (an action); cease, desist.
- We mon haue payne that neuer shall stynt15th c., “[The Creation]”, in Wakefield Mystery Plays; Re-edited in George England, Alfred W. Pollard, editors, The Towneley Plays (Early English Text Society Extra Series; LXXI), London: […] Oxford...
- O do thy cruell wrath and spightfull wrong / At length allay, and stint thy stormy strife […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
- To stop speaking or talking (of a subject).
- To be sparing or mean.
- The next party you throw, don't stint on the beer.
- Synonyms:
- skimp
- To restrain within certain limits; to bound; to restrict to a scant allowance.
- I shall not in the least go about to extenuate the Latitude of it: or to stint it only to the Produćtion of Weeds, of Thorns, Thisiles, and other the less useful Kinds of Plants1695, John Woodward, An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth and Terrestrial Bodies
- She stints them in their meals.1729, William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
- To assign a certain task to (a person), upon the performance of which he/she is excused from further labour for that day or period; to stent.
- To impregnate successfully; to get with foal.
- The majority of maiden mares will become stinted while at work.1861, John Henry Walsh, The Horse, in the Stable and the Field
Noun (1)
stint (plural stints)
- A period of time spent doing or being something; a spell.
- He had a stint in jail.
- Lilian Greenwood has ranked boosting diversity and inclusivity among her crowning achievements from her two-year stint chairing the House of Commons Transport Select Committee.2020 May 20, “Network News: A legacy of greater diversity in transport”, in Rail, page 13
- Limit; bound; restraint; extent.
- God has wrote upon no created thing the utmost stint of his power.1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London
- Quantity or task assigned; proportion allotted.
- Jack bovv'd and vvas oblig'd—confeſs'd 'tvvas ſtrange / That ſo retir'd he ſhould not vviſh a change, / But knevv no medium betvveen guzzling beer, / And his old stint—three thouſand pounds a year.1782, William Cowper, “Retirement”, in Poems, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], →OCLC, page 288
- A part of the race between two consecutive pit stops.
- That left Maldonado with a 6.2-second lead. Alonso closed in throughout their third stints, getting the gap down to 4.2secs before Maldonado stopped for the final time on lap 41.2012 May 13, Andrew Benson, “Williams's Pastor Maldonado takes landmark Spanish Grand Prix win”, in BBC Sport
Noun (2)
stint (plural stints)
- Any of several very small wading birds in the genus Calidris. Types of sandpiper, such as the dunlin or the sanderling.
Also used as
stint is also the misspelling of stent.
Examples of stint in a sentence
- Andy, like Blossom, stinted the standard, gave it less, in order to give (secretly) more.
- Curt Schilling was "chomping at the bit" following Monday’s three-inning stint in an intrasquad minor-league game.
- When he finished his stint in Brooklyn, Weisburd decided to team up with Larry Sherman, another young criminologist.
Synonyms of stint
Forms of stint
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | stints |
| present participle | stinting |
| past participle | stinted |
| past | stinted |
| Noun | |
| plural | stints |
Origin of stint
From Middle English stinten, from Old English styntan (“to make blunt”) and *stintan (attested in āstintan (“to make dull, stint, assuage”)), from Proto-West Germanic *stuntijan, from Proto-Germanic *stuntijaną and Proto-Germanic *stintaną (“to make short”), probably influenced in some senses by cognate Old Norse *stynta, stytta (“to make short, shorten”).
Origin unknown.
Words formed from stint
Words that rhyme with stint
Questions about stint
- What does stint mean?
- Stint means to stop (an action); cease, desist.
- What part of speech is stint?
- Stint can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce stint?
- Stint is pronounced /stɪnt/.
- What is the past tense of stint?
- The past tense of stint is stinted.
Words near stint in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: stint (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-stint.wav.
Cite this entry: “stint.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stint. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.