scrimp

English

Probably from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German schrimpen (“to shrivel up, wrinkle”), 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.

scrimp (plural scrimps)

scrimp (third-person singular simple present scrimps, present participle scrimping, simple past and past participle scrimped)

(transitive, sometimes with on) To make too small or short; to shortchange.
Synonyms: scant, contract, shorten; skimp

to scrimp the pattern of a coat

The company scrimped on the design so badly that it ended up defective.
(transitive) To limit or straiten; to put on short allowance.
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
  For, as a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler.
- 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:
  There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread, / There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead.
(intransitive) To be frugal: to a reasonable and wise extent; to a miserly and unwise extent.
Synonym: skimp
- 1904, Mark Twain, The $30,000 Bequest‎:
  “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!”
- 2020, Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half, Dialogue Books, page 334:
  They had to scrimp each month to afford it out of pocket.

to be frugal

scrimp (comparative more scrimp, superlative most scrimp)