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]

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

cheap skate

Any cheap skate can whiz past and give his enemy in trouble the hard-boiled eye, but it takes a fine soul to be generous when the natural impulse calls for spite work.

From "Say Fellows—" Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues by Wade C. Smith

"With a feller like Kuhner," Marks Pasinsky declared on the following Monday, "you couldn't be a cheap skate, Mr. Potash."

From Potash & Perlmutter Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures by Montague Glass

You're too sweet and lovely to be the sport of a cheap skate like that.

From They of the High Trails by Hamlin Garland

Pretty cheap skate, to stand for a thing like that—don’t you think?”

From The Brute by Frederic Arnold Kummer

"We'll get this cheap skate, Sliver," suggested Ronicky.

From The Seventh Man by Max Brand