skimmed » skimp

Chiefly in:   skimp milk

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • I drink whole milk too. I find that drinking skimp milk doesn’t fool your appetite — it’ll just demand three times as much in revenge for being short changed. (Nosdiet discussion list, Nov 15, 2003)
  • He also wants women to drink a glass of skimp milk for a dash of calcium. (The Dancer's Diet, accessed Nov 24, 2008)
  • man, I LOVE milk. I was raised on skimp milk…and every now and then Id get treated to real milk! (whole milk!!) when I went to someone elses house or something. (ScratchLounge forum, Jul 20, 2006)

Analyzed or reported by:

_Skimp milk_ for _skimmed_ (or _skim_) _milk_ is not a very frequent substitution, but one that immediately makes sense. As Pat Schwieterman writes in his forum post, “Skimmed milk does skimp on the fat compared to whole milk.”

As a caveat, there are indications that some speakers intentionally employ _skimp_ for jocular derision:

>Just last week we had an interesting conversation in our office about skim milk. Names such as ‘white water’ and ’skimp milk’ were mentioned. For people who grew up drinking whole milk, the idea of changing to skim milk, also known as fat-free milk, is unpleasant. (link)

The cites above, however, do sound genuine, and the first two appear in texts that do not use a jocular tone. (I am less certain about cite number three.)

| link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2008/11/24 |

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