English edit

Etymology edit

pinch +‎ commons

Noun edit

pinch-commons

  1. (obsolete) A miser; especially someone parsimonious with food.
    • 1822, Walter Scott, chapter 6, in The Pirate:
      She listened to them with a haughty and unmoved air, and replied at length aloud, and in English—"I will not. What if this house be strewed in ruins before morning—where would be the world's want in the crazed projector, and the niggardly pinch-commons, by which it is inhabited? They will needs come to reform Zetland customs, let them try how they like a Zetland storm.—You that would not perish, quit this house!"

Synonyms edit