Cheapskate

An American coinage of the mid-1890s: Etymonline dates 'cheapskate' to 1896, formed from the adjective 'cheap' plus the slang 'skate', and World Wide Words located the earliest known example in the Newark Daily Advocate of Ohio in 1896, a streetcar motorman's splenetic insult ending 'cheap skate of a tenth assistant barnyard corporal'. The 'skate' element is the disputed part. In American print at the end of the 19th century, skate simultaneously meant a worn-out horse (recorded from 1894, of uncertain origin), a mean or contemptible person, and a second-rate sportsman - so cheapskate is cheap plus a current term of contempt. Where that contemptuous skate came from is unresolved: World Wide Words offers as the best suggestion Scots skate or skite, a contemptuous word heard in the song 'Maggie Lauder' (written about 1643), which was a camp favourite among American soldiers in the War of Independence and may have preserved it among emigrant Scots; it survives in weakened form as Australian and New Zealand 'skite' and inside 'blatherskite'. The anchor's dating and derivation check out, with the ultimate origin of skate honestly uncertain.