Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a mean person; occas. as v. see cite 1851; also attrib.

c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Skinflint a griping, sharping, close-fisted fellow.
1718		S. Centlivre Bold Stroke for a Wife IV i: Gabriel Skinflint has been at the Minister’s.
1721		Penkethman’s Jests 112: I take you to be no more than a Flash, and Mrs. Skin-flint, my Neighbour, shall PUN with you for a Pistole, if I do not lose my Aim.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1748		Smollett Roderick Random (1979) 47: If my advice had been taken, that old skin-flint should have been damn’d before he had got more than the third of his demand.
1761		Memoirs of [...] Jane D****s 62: Old Jane was such a skinflint, if I may be allowed the expression.
1775		K. O’Hara Two Misers I i: So! here comes t’other skinflint, Gripe himself.
1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn).
1800		M. Edgeworth Castle Rackrent (1832) 43: She was [...] very liberal in her housekeeping, nothing at all of the skin-flint in her.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		‘Jon Bee’ Dict. of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, etc. 158: Skin-flint — one who would perform that operation, were it possible.
1826		Cumberland Pacquet 12 Dec. 4/5: A skin-flint [...] She buys me the worst o’ meat [...] Tough, stinking tripe and cows’ feet.
1831		Satirist (London) 21 Aug. 155/2: Mr. Flint. I want three thousand pounds: must have it. Flint.—And so you shall, my Lord; but you know we must have security.
1832		J.K. Paulding Westward Ho! I 46: What a cursed old skinflint!
1842		S. Lover Handy Andy 296: It’s only this barn that is kept up at all, because it’s convaynient for owld Skinflint on the farm.
1843–44		Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit (1995) 299: Your own flesh and blood might come to want too, might they, for anything you cared? Oh you precious old flint!
1848		Bartlett Dict. Americanisms.
1849		Sam Sly 14 Apr. 2/1: [O]ld Skinflint, of the cat’s-meat shop, would not part with five pounds, much less hundreds.
1849		Taunton Courier 17 Jan. 8/2: I [was] forced to give what that old flint of a Down Easter chose to ask.
c.1850		F.M. Whitcher Widow Bedott Papers (1883) 34: He said, that of all born skin-flints ’t ever he had to do with, Tim Crane was the biggest.
1851		Cork Examiner 29 Dec. 3/1: No thanks to the Guardians of this Union — the shkinflints — that wouldn’t give us a betther dinner.
1851		R.S. Surtees Young Tom Hall (1926) 190: What a screw-drivin’, skinflintin’, usorious appearance everything has in this house; one could almost fancy the walls and crannnies filled with coin.
1861		Hills & Plains I 179: ‘I have no confidence in Charlotte, or her skin-flint husband’.
1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 31/1: That miserly skin-flint, Bob Coombs.
1874		M. Clarke Term of His Natural Life (1897) 395: As villainous an old scoundrel and skinflint as ever poisoned a seaman.
1881		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 8 Jan. 6/2: tales of a skinflint ‘The very tightest, clostest, farseeing, calculating Skinflint ever seen was old Klamskatter’.
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 7 Jan. 3/4: A very skinflint chap [...] who travels for a New York house, fell in with a married woman.
1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) II 330: The mistress [...] told them to put the fire out. When she had gone, ‘The old skinflint,’ said one servant.
1891		Wanganui Chronicle (NZ) 23 Sept. 2: Had the Opposition chosen to go with the ‘Skinflints’ [...] not a single vote would have passed.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 74: Skin Flint, a stingy person, or skin the lamb.
1898		F.W. Hume Hagar of the Pawn-Shop 11: These won’t cost you much, and I ask for nothing more—Skinflint.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 29 May 1/1: He is now dreading his skinflint auditing the petty cash box.
1914		R. Lardner You Know Me Al (1984) 95: Some of them old skinflints has no heart.
1920		Marvel 12 June 2: Mean, old thieving skinflint, he is.
1932		D. Hammett ‘They Can Only Hang You Once’ in Nightmare Town (2001) 325: His uncle Timothy, a miserly old skinflint, lousy with money.
1947		S. Lewis Kingsblood Royal (2001) 55: After some spirited notes on Edgar’s ancestors as Yankee skinflints.
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 249: I shouldn’t expect too much from Tommy when I thought of the various skinflints he had been working for.
1969		R. Rendell Best Man To Die (1981) 110: If you’re going to employ an assassin and you’re a mean skinflint you pick the lowest of the low to do your dirty work.
1978		P. Theroux Picture Palace 97: Critics were skinflints and browsers; they praised me with their hands in their pockets; they didn’t buy.
1982		G.V. Higgins Patriot Game (1985) 44: You poor old skinflint, you. You must want something big, you’re buying lunch.
1999		K. Sampson Powder 28: Whassis, Turnbull! Bloody skinflint!
2000		Indep. Rev. 9 May 4: She may have been branded a ‘skinflint’.
2013		T. Robinson Hard Bounce [ebook] Jimmy, the legendary skinflint who owned the club, was still too cheap [...] to buy a CD player.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 133: Twig lank-jaws, the miser, that skin-flint old elf.
1790		Derby Mercury 30 Sept. 1/2: A rich old hunks is he [...] Great Paragon of skin-flint laws.
1818		M.L. Weems Drunkard’s Looking Glass (1929) 121: They will [...] scrape and save in the ‘true skin-flint stile’.
1906		Sun. Times (Perth) 30 Sept. 1/1: A well-off Busselton greengrocer economises on the skinflint system [...] after serving customers he goes around and collects the empty paper-bags.
1907		Gem 16 Mar. 4: He’s a skinflint sort of old chap.
1960		Albuquerque Jrnl (NM) 14 Aug. n.p.: Cantzeen was a miser who [...] lived a hand-to-mouth skinflint existence.
1992		Star Press (Muncie, IN) 5 July 33/1: [headline] Skinflint existence ‘a way of life, recession or not’.