Other forms: scrimped, scrimping
To scrimp is to spend as little as you possibly can. Scrimp and save, scrimping on food, scrimp for years.
It nearly always comes with save, and the pair means going without in order to put money aside. To scrimp on something is to do it too cheaply. The word came from a Scots adjective meaning meagre. Note that skimp is a separate word doing much the same job.
1verbscrimpTo spend as little as possible.
“They scrimped for years to pay for their daughter's university fees.”
scrimp is a saving.
From Scots scrimp, meagre, from a Germanic root meaning to shrivel. Shrimp comes from the same shrinking.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ker- — to cut off
Proto-Germanic
*skrimpaną — to shrink
Frankish
*skrimpan
Old Dutch
*scrimpan
Middle Low German
schrimpen — to shrivel up, wrinkle
Scots
scrimp — meager
English, today
scrimp
Built from
From Scots scrimp (“meager”), from Middle Dutch - or Middle Low German schrimpen (“to shrivel up, wrinkle”), from Old Dutch scrimpan, from Frankish skrimpan, ultimately from Proto-Germanic skrimpaną (“to shrink”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)ker- (“to cut off”), related to Old English sċrimman (“to shrink”) and sċrincan (“to shrivel up”). a doublet of shrink and shrimp and shrim.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA