scrimp
Americanverb (used without object)
verb (used with object)
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to be sparing or restrictive of or in; limit severely.
to scrimp food.
-
to keep on short allowance; provide sparingly for.
to scrimp their elderly parents.
verb
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to be very economical or sparing in the use (of) (esp in the phrase scrimp and save )
-
(tr) to treat meanly
he is scrimping his children
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(tr) to cut too small
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
scrimpsimple
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scrimpssimple
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have scrimpedperfect
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has scrimpedperfect
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am scrimpingprogressive
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are scrimpingprogressive
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is scrimpingprogressive
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have been scrimpingperfect progressive
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has been scrimpingperfect progressive
Past
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scrimpedsimple
-
had scrimpedperfect
-
was scrimpingprogressive
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were scrimpingprogressive
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had been scrimpingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of scrimp
First recorded in 1710–20; from Scandinavian; compare Swedish skrympa, Norwegian, Danish skrumpe (originally from an unattested skrimpa, ) “to shrivel,” cognate with Middle High German schrimpfen “to contract”; see origin at shrimp
Explanation
When you scrimp, you get by on very little money. If you scrimp all year long in order to buy tickets to the Stanley Cup finals, you save every last penny to be able to go to those games. If you scrimp, yes, you are watching every dime trying to spend as little as you can — for the purpose of saving your money. Maybe you walk everywhere to avoid paying for a bus ride, or you make your friends cut your hair. Scrimp looks like shrink and scrape and that's the goal: shrinking the amount of money you spend to scrape together some savings, for a specific purpose or just the security of having money in the bank.
Vocabulary lists containing scrimp
Born a Crime
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Commonly Confused Words, List 2
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Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
However, I don’t want my son to think that I will take care of everything and that he doesn’t have to work hard and scrimp and save.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 6, 2026
She meets and marries fellow student Jen Chao-Pe, and together they move into a dilapidated walk-up in Washington Heights, where Agnes learns to scrimp and save and paint her own walls.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 17, 2025
"It can be really really hard when you're having to scrimp and save and spend so much time thinking and organising and figuring out where the food is going to come from," she says.
From BBC ● Aug. 16, 2025
You might want to scrimp and save, but this isn’t the time for that.
From Salon ● Dec. 29, 2024
This book was too important to scrimp on details.
From "The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian's Art Changed Science" by Joyce Sidman
Down the hall, 56-year-old Janine Cox gets an occasional bag of chips from the vending machine and scrimps to add to the collection plate at church.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 15, 2023
As for the podcast itself, our central aim is to provide listeners with 20 minutes every day that never scrimps on storytelling but is anchored in the news agenda.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 24, 2018
If I have one criticism of Passan’s book, it is that he scrimps on the history of pitchers’ arms.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 15, 2016
Yet no matter how much the 58-year-old scrimps and saves, shopping at discount stores, she never has enough.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 6, 2016
Na, he seldom scrimps 't to them 'at follows his biddin'.
From Warlock o' Glenwarlock by MacDonald, George
My mom and dad were extremely frugal; they scrimped and saved.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 11, 2025
Perhaps they might think of their parents who weren’t able to have a “maximum level of enjoyment” while they scrimped and saved to come up with $86,926 for tuition and fees each year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2025
She scrimped to buy him his first electric guitar and she encouraged him to be a musician.
From New York Times ● Feb. 1, 2024
He scrimped together his first wages to buy the small squeezebox he packed when he immigrated — alone — to the United States at the age of 15.
From Seattle Times ● May 20, 2022
He promises to choose wise investments there and multiply the several thousand dollars the couple has scrimped to save.
From "Enrique's Journey" by Sonia Nazario
“We have been scrimping for a long time.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 24, 2026
We’ve been scrimping for a long time, and I feel it’s okay to start using some of our nonretirement savings for home improvements and personal wants.
From MarketWatch ● May 21, 2026
"It's literally scrimping and scraping to be able to manage to get one lesson a week," she says.
From BBC ● May 24, 2025
Dick Rutan achieved celebrity and was in demand on the speaker circuit but didn’t gain the fortune he had expected after scrimping for years to get Voyager aloft.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 8, 2024
Him and that little old missus of his, God bless her sweet old face, that have been scrimping all these years to pay back what that blasted kid robbed out of the bank.
From The Night Operator by Packard, Frank L. (Frank Lucius)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
