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

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

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

"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 Glass, Montague

Don't tell me that you are interested in that cheap skate.

From The Sisters-In-Law by Atherton, Gertrude Franklin Horn

"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

He's a cheap skate to get you into this trouble and not help you out.

From In a Little Town by Hughes, Rupert