What's the difference between scrimp and skimp?

Scrimp


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To make too small or short; to limit or straiten; to put on short allowance; to scant; to contract; to shorten; as, to scrimp the pattern of a coat.
  • (a.) Short; scanty; curtailed.
  • (n.) A pinching miser; a niggard.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) 5.04pm GMT Speaking of Spain, the New York Times is running a hard-hitting piece about how Spaniards are scrimping in the time of crisis.
  • (2) So we are not talking about people at the beginning of their career scrimping around, hard-up for money.
  • (3) It might mean scrimping and saving for a deposit on a house, only to see prices spin out of your orbit.
  • (4) The club scrimps on payroll (30th, 29th, 29th in the last three years) and, even in the face of sparse attendances from a disenfranchised fan base, still profits from league revenue sharing rules.
  • (5) Over the past few decades we’ve all scrimped and saved up a mountainous pension piggy bank.
  • (6) The Commons environmental audit committee also calls for the ringfencing of cash to preserve natural habitat (pdf) , to prevent HS2 Ltd scrimping on measures that rail engineers deem impractical.
  • (7) Soft-spoken and often seemingly ill at ease with publicity, Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe was born to an impoverished family of canoe-makers in the remote district of Otuoke who scrimped to put him through school.
  • (8) And I want to start today by saying how grateful I am to all of you, to everyone who poured your hearts and your hopes into this campaign, who drove for miles and lined the streets waving homemade signs, who scrimped and saved to raise money, who knocked on doors and made calls, who talked, sometimes argued with your friends and neighbors, who emailed and contributed online, who invested so much in our common enterprise, to the moms and dads who came to our events, who lifted their little girls and little boys on their shoulders and whispered in their ears, “See, you can be anything you want to be.” Donald Trump wins US election: Clinton says glass ceiling will be broken – live Read more To the young people, like 13-year-old Anne Riddell from Mayfield, Ohio, who had been saving for two years to go to Disney World and decided to use her savings instead to travel to Pennsylvania with her mom and volunteer there, as well.
  • (9) As for scrambling together a deposit for a first flat, some calculations suggest that young families are nowadays required to scrimp for a dozen years , others put the figure at 22 .
  • (10) It’s seductive: we all know someone who did win: the entrepreneur who struck it rich, hard-working immigrants who scrimped to put the kids through college, clawing their way to the middle class.
  • (11) No amount of scrimping on holidays or mobile phones will be enough to pay for the £100,000 needed to move up from a two-bed flat to a three-bed semi in many parts of Britain, let alone find the £500 a month that pension experts tell us we need to put aside every month to fund a decent pension in retirement.
  • (12) If these organisations want to scrimp on staff pensions it begs the question, are these the sort of organisations that we want running our welfare system, our schools and our hospitals?
  • (13) He said he had been working 90 hours a week because the governing body scrimped on staff costs in order to save up for a sports centre, including a women-only swimming pool.
  • (14) With the few dollars they scrimped from their labor, some bought tickets and boarded buses, even if they couldn't always sit where they wanted to sit.
  • (15) Where their parents might have had to scrimp for three years to get a deposit together in the 1980s, the Resolution Foundation calculates that high house prices would mean a youngster on middling pay today having to save for something like 22 years.
  • (16) The unemployed and the sick do not have the scope to muddle through by scrimping and saving as those who are lucky enough to be in work do.
  • (17) Confronted with the prospect of paying a £20-a-week bedroom tax out of a weekly income of around £110 from April, she has also opted to leave ("I'm scrimping and saving as it is," she says); she will move around 100 miles away to Weston-super-Mare on 21 March.
  • (18) Millions of families are struggling with the hidden costs of sending children to state school, with many forced to take out loans or scrimp on food and heating to pay for basics such as dinners, uniforms, course materials and trips.
  • (19) Panic about so-called “knife-edge”, “life-or-death” negotiations has become so commonplace that it is almost meaningless to a population whose major concerns are still making ends meet and scrimping for enough to eat.
  • (20) But Justin King, chief executive, said Sainsbury's had prospered, as shoppers apparently scrimped in October and November to fund a blowout in December: "Customers took the opportunity to spend a little less, week in week out, so they could buy the best for special occasions."

Skimp


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To slight; to do carelessly; to scamp.
  • (v. t.) To make insufficient allowance for; to scant; to scrimp.
  • (v. i.) To save; to be parsimonious or niggardly.
  • (a.) Scanty.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) And they’re hard on themselves.” McCaw said players often will pay for a top-quality coach, then try to skimp on a fitness trainer.
  • (2) We are under a lot of budget pressure at the moment but the community won’t thank us if we skimp unreasonably on national security,’’ Abbott said.
  • (3) He skimped studies to pursue drama and started his career with one line in the 1996 West End musical Martin Guerre .
  • (4) After all, my mother belongs to a generation of bright middle-class women who were only ever expected to work until a family came along, whose education was skimped and ambitions stifled – and who subsequently encouraged their daughters to believe the sky was the limit.
  • (5) But he and his fellow reformers aren't seeking to skimp on algebra, or calling for a bonfire of the works of the Chicago school.
  • (6) But you might have three years’ of tax documents on an eight-year-old laptop that won’t run a new operating system, or you might skimp on your tablet and end up with a model made by a small company that goes out of business and thus never fixes new security holes.
  • (7) The seven-storey store attracts more than 15m shoppers a year, and its new owners have not skimped on the investment required to keep them coming back.
  • (8) The Justice Department also accused the Texas of intentionally skimping on voter outreach after the law was passed.
  • (9) George Osborne's speech to the Conservative party conference skimped on proposals to reform finance – and a party whose two treasurers are a hedge-fund manager and a broker is unlikely to give the City too hard a time.
  • (10) Several investigations executed in recent years show that many school-children skimp increasingly on their school lunches the older they become.
  • (11) Popular books like these tend to generalize and skimp on the science, says Murray.
  • (12) Had Paterson listened, he would have been told that skimping on flood defences is deeply false economy even in austere times: ministers admit each scheme saves £8 in damage for every £1 spent.
  • (13) Murphy and Co aren’t trying to dole out the revelations or skimp on the secrets for some vague future date.
  • (14) Setting rules and controlling just about every aspect of its stores, so that the only thing that franchisees can skimp on is wages," he said after the ruling.
  • (15) Over a quarter of all adults skimped on meals so others in their households could eat.
  • (16) Asked whether the jury had skimped on reading the judge's 109 pages of instructions in order to reach their verdict so quickly, Hogan replied: "Before the closing arguments [by Apple and Samsung] the judge read to us the final instructions, instance by instance.
  • (17) Are government and local authorities skimping on quality of training and consultancy in favour of quantity of adoptions?
  • (18) the less one knows the more one is tempted to skimp and perform a minimal 'pilot' study.
  • (19) It is just that skimping on the pay of the people who keep hospitals working is the wrong way to do it.
  • (20) Developer Telltale Games' take on the zombie apocalypse has won widespread acclaim, and for good reason: it doesn't skimp on plot or characterisation, and will give you the shivers if played at night.