penny pincher

[pen-ee pin-cher]

noun

1. a miserly or stingy person.

Other Word Forms

• penny-pinching noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of penny pincher¹

First recorded in 1920–25; penny ( def. ) + pincher ( def. ); pinch ( def. ) (in sense “to economize unduly”); pinchpenny ( def. )

Idioms and Phrases

see pinch pennies.

When To Use

What does penny pincher mean?

A penny pincher is a person who’s very careful or stingy with their money—they don’t like to spend it and they don’t like to give it away.The image is that of someone clutching tightly to even the smallest amount of money so it doesn’t leave their hands. Penny typically refers to a one-cent coin.Penny pincher is synonymous with the word miser, but whereas miser is always used negatively (to refer to Ebenezer Scrooge types), penny pincher can be used either in a negative way or in a more neutral way to refer to someone who’s just trying to save money because they’re on a tight budget.The same thing can be said about the related idiomatic verb pinch pennies, meaning to be very, very careful about how one spends one’s money—it can mean to be thrifty or frugal, or to be miserly.Penny pincher is sometimes spelled with a hyphen: penny-pincher.Example: Ellen’s rich uncle was such a penny pincher that he used to give her a pencil for her birthday.