cheap skate

Idioms  

1. A stingy person, as in He's a real cheap skate when it comes to tipping. This idiom combines cheap (for “penurious”) with the slang usage of skate for a contemptible or low individual. It has largely replaced the earlier cheap John. [Slang; late 1800s]

---

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

cheap skate

She's a good, decent, affectionate girl, and Dave's a cheap skate, all right.

From Main Street by Lewis, Sinclair

I'd not waste breath teaching a whiner or a cheap skate.

From Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise by Phillips, David Graham

Every cheap skate of a real estate man keeps one stenographer.

From The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) by Wilder, Marshall Pinckney

He’s a cheap skate, into a motorboat—but I don’t expect he’ll be into hit long, ’count of some river fellers bein’ with him.

From The River Prophet by Coleman, Ralph P. (Ralph Pallen)

"We have been waiting for instructions, and, besides," he continued, "this cheap skate that you found here is trying to make us trouble over something which took place in the camp last night."

From Boy Scouts on the Great Divide or, The Ending of the Trail by Fletcher, Archibald Lee