- 1
To scrimp is to try to save as much money as you can when you do not have much. You spend as little as possible, skip things you want, and make do. You often hear it with save: scrimp and save. You can also scrimp on something, which means you spend too little on it — they scrimped on heating, so the house was cold. It is a little old-fashioned, but still clear. It is not slang. It is about money and going without, not about being mean for fun.
省吃儉用
組成From Scots scrimp “meager, not enough”, from older Dutch or Low German schrimpen “to shrivel up”, going back to a Germanic word for shrink. It is a sister of shrink and shrimp — same old “get smaller” root, not a compound in English.
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
scrimpnoun/skɹɪmp/
- 1
A pinching miser; a niggard.
scrimpverb/skɹɪmp/
- 1
To make too small or short; to shortchange.
- to scrimp the pattern of a coat
- The company scrimped on the design so badly that it ended up defective.
- 2
To limit or straiten; to put on short allowance.
- For, as a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler.
- There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread, / There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead.
- 3
To be frugal, whether to a reasonable and wise extent or to a miserly and unwise extent.
- “Oh, Electra, jewel of women, darling of my heart, we are free at last, we roll in wealth, we need never scrimp again. It's a case for Veuve Cliquot!”
- They had to scrimp each month to afford it out of pocket.
scrimpadj/skɹɪmp/
- 1
Short; scanty; curtailed.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。