Thing To Do Today: scrimp.

 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.