Other forms: stints
A stint is a fixed period of work or duty. Six months on a rig, two years abroad, a morning on the till.
The word implies both a beginning and an end, which is why it suits jobs that were always going to finish: a stint as caretaker, a brief stint in the army. It usually takes as or in. There is an older verb that means to be sparing with something, which survives mainly in the negative — somebody who does not stint on the butter is being generous with it.
To stint is to blunt. Old English styntan meant to make blunt or dull, so stinting on something is taking the edge off it.
Proto-Germanic
*stuntijaną
Proto-West Germanic
*stuntijan
Old English
styntan — to make blunt
Middle English
stinten
English, today
stint
Built from
From Middle English stinten, from Old English styntan (“to make blunt”) and stintan (attested in āstintan (“to make dull, stint, assuage”)), from Proto-West Germanic stuntijan, from Proto-Germanic stuntijaną and Proto-Germanic stintaną (“to make short”), probably influenced in some senses by cognate Old Norse stynta, stytta (“to make short, shorten”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Time & Calendar, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 8 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word