Skinflint

By Deane Barker tags: definition

Definition: someone who is very reluctant to spend money

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

literally “kind of person who would skin a flint to save or gain something”

This supposedly comes from a 1656 poem called The Legend of Captain Jones. From Word Histories:

This were but petty hardship, Jones was one
Would Skinne a Flint, and eat him when h’had done.

Wikitionary says this:

From the phrase skin a flint (“go to extreme lengths for the sake of gain or economy”), from the brittleness and hardness of flint which makes it almost impossible to remove just its skin without shattering it.

A flint is a rock used to start fires. I’m fuzzy on how someone would “skin” one, I guess.

Why I Looked It Up

From Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness:

A well-known skinflint, [Benjamin] Franklin calculated that thousands of pounds of candle wax could be saved with his idea.

Links from this – Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness October 1, 2022
This is a book about behavioral economics – why humans make the choices they do, and how they can be persuaded to make other choices. Well, not “persuaded” so much, but rather – wait for it – nudged . A “nudge” is a change to how a choice is framed or presented that causes people to pick an option...