skinflintn.adj.

1699 B. E. New Dict. Canting Crew Skin-flint, a griping,..close-fisted Fellow.

1718 S. Centlivre Bold Stroke for Wife iv. ii. 42 Why Gabriel Skinflint has been at the Ministers.]

1763 A. Murphy Citizen ii. i. 25 An old miserly good for nothing skin-flint.

1791 A. Wilson Laurel Disputed ii. 22 How Skin-flint grain't his pocks o' goud to loss.

1816 W. Scott Antiquary I. xi. 255 It would have been long..ere my womankind could have made such a reasonable bargain with that old skin-flint.

1847 J. K. Paulding & W. I. Paulding Noble Exile iii. i. 128 There's your dirty coppers. I won't take anything from such a skinflint.

1891 C. Roberts Adrift in Amer. 226 Which sum the captain, who was a regular skinflint, said was far too much.

1936 Stage June 46/2 The village skinflint..has a bill for one hundred and twenty-five dollars against his mother and is threatening to dispossess her unless it is paid.

1976 G. Jones tr. D. J. Williams in A. Richards Penguin Bk. Welsh Short Stories 129 ‘You remember now, Teimoth,’ that old skinflint said, ‘three quid's a lot of money to give for a bit of a calf like that.’

2002 GQ Dec. 207/1 Organizations constantly badger people who they know have already given to other charities. Why don't they ever make cold calls to misers and skinflints?

1737 J. Breval Rape of Helen 9 Those Skin-flint Abigails the Graces.

1789 G. Parker Life's Painter xiv. 125 The miser, that skint-flint old elf.

1820 T. Wilson Pitman's Pay i. liii If aw din't her bottle fill, Aw's then a skint-flint, sneck-drawn dog.

1854 H. Miller Schools & Schoolmasters (1857) v. 86 The skin-flint wife of a ‘paper minister’.

1875 J. W. de Forest Playing Mischief xxxix. 137 It might be that behind this skinflint proffer there was coming a hint of legacies and of a share in that undivided Murray estate.

1955 Times 21 May 6/5 Mr. Callaghan was positively explosive in his denunciations of the ‘Tories’. On pensions, for instance, he denounced them as a ‘mean skinflint lot’.

1959 Life 20 July 30/1 Democrats denounced the new goal as ‘propaganda’ and the $77 billion spending ceiling as ‘skinflint’.

1990 Nation (N.Y.) 22 Oct. 442/2 The chasm between rhetorical pretense and skinflint reality was nicely represented in two Times editorials, one on top of the other.

1995 Mother Jones June 18/1 Claudia Smith, 46, whose job entails..tracking down skinflint employers, and helping workers get medical help.

1853 H. Cockton Percy Effingham II. viii. 178 I hate such near, beggarly ways! I've no patience with such miserable skinflintism.

1893 Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch 10 July The rewards of ‘skinflintism’ are not great in the long run.

1982 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 29 Mar. a19/1 The leaning toward welfarism or skinflintism will reflect that year's will of the American people.