To scrimp is to be very sparing. It's making your pie with more crust than filling (and not that much crust); it's cutting your curtains so there's only just enough fabric for them to meet; it's having only two pairs of underpants; it's planting your seedlings in rolled-up newspaper; it's wearing your clothes until they're threadbare.
Scrimping used to be a sign of poverty or meanness. Now it's really rather fashionable and really very virtuous
It's still no fun, though.
Thing To Do Today: scrimp. This is a Scottish word, but no one is sure from where it came before that. There are various Scandinavian words that look as if they're related, though: the Swedish skrumpna, for example, means to shrink or shrivel.
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