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

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

From Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

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

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

From The Seventh Man by Max Brand

"You think he's a cheap skate, do you?"

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

“He’s nothing but a cheap skate, and you can’t make anything else out of him.”

From The Wind Before the Dawn by Dell H. Munger