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Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origins 83. The word origin today is
Cheapskate. Okay. Let's take a look at the note. If we say someone is a cheapskate,
he is thought to be a stingy person that does not like to spend money. Okay. Good.
Let's continue. The origin of cheapskate does not have anything to do with ice
skates or rollerskates or any type of skates and has nothing to do with them
being on sale or being cheap or anything like that. The skate part of cheapskate
refers to an old meaning of skate that is no longer in use. Skate used to mean
an unkind, mean or contemptible person . It seems unclear why skate used to have
this meaning, but the best guess is it seems that it may have been a variant of
the Scottish word skite or skeet which did refer to a
person that was considered to be contemptible or disliked. You know , just
not a nice person or a mean person. So maybe it came from that. Okay, Anyway we
just give two examples here. Example number one. Somebody might say my God ! He
is such a cheapskate. The only reason he shaves the hair on his head is he
doesn't want to pay for haircuts. You know something like that. That would be
typical or number two here. We could say Bob is a real cheapskate.
Anytime we buy rounds of beer, Bob always disappears when it is his turn.So he
doesn't want to do what you know, you should do. Obviously,
if everybody's buying a round, it's your turn, you should you should do it too. But
you know, maybe he doesn't want to do it. So maybe he doesn't care what people
think of him. He's a cheapskate. He doesn't want to spend that money. Okay.
Anyway, I hope you got it. I hope it's clear. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.