Words: scrimp, adj., adv., v. and n.
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
"NOW HE'S Sixty-Four!" You read it here first, but in seven years' time many headlines will use that emended phrase upon Paul McCartney's birthday. Such is journalists' obsession with other people's money, there will also be sneers about his having sung of renting a cottage on the Isle of Wight "if it's not too dear. / We shall scrimp and save."
That shall is not only alliterative but correct (unlike his "this world in which we live in"). Scrimp began as an adjective - meaning scant - in the early 18th century (missed by Johnson), and is probably from the Middle German schrimpfen for shrivel, hence wrinkle the nose. Soon a verb, and less commonly a noun, as in Virginia Woolf's account of her penmanship: "such a scrimp of a hand".
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments