# Word of the Day - Pinchgut



## debodun (May 21, 2022)

Pinchgut (noun) - a stingy person; miser; cheapskate; tightwad.

Ebenezer Scrooge was a notorious pinchgut before his reformation.


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## hollydolly (May 21, 2022)

Never heard this word before, great word!! Scots are notoriously deemed to be pinchguts ... but I'm not one of them


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## Lavinia (May 21, 2022)

I'm glad you said that, hollydolly, I was searching through my dictionaries trying to find it.

Pinchgut is not a word we use in Britain, so Dickens would not have used it. Penny-pinching (or tight-arse if you wish to be vulgar), is what a Brit would say.


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## Kaila (May 21, 2022)

Never having heard of this word, in the U.S. either, I wonder where it might have been used.

Therefore, I looked it up, and all I could find regarding its use, is that the term, _pinchgut_ was used in *nautical* settings. There, it referred to someone who gave others very meager food portions, and starved others and themselves, while doing so.


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## ohioboy (May 21, 2022)

Jacob Marley was a Scrooge too!


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## Warrigal (May 21, 2022)

Kaila said:


> Never having heard of this word, in the U.S. either, I wonder where it might have been used.
> 
> Therefore, I looked it up, and all I could find regarding its use, is that the term, _pinchgut_ was used in *nautical* settings. There, it referred to someone who gave others very meager food portions, and starved others and themselves, while doing so.


Pinchgut was the name given to a small island in Sydney Harbour. Convicts who were troublesome were marooned there with meagre rations as a punishment. Later the island was fortified with a fine Martello tower  and today it is known as Fort Denison.



> Pinchgut Island became Sydney’s Fort Denison.​
> In 1788, the convict Thomas Hill was rowed out to a 49 foot high sandstone islet in the middle of Sydney harbour. He was left there for a week in irons, subsisting on bread and water until he caught sight of the dinghy that was to bring him ashore. On his return, it’s said that folk took one look at Hill’s emaciated frame and a wily character christened the island Pinchgut.
> Hill fared better than Francis Morgan, who was executed for murder on the same island eight years later and hung in chains in a gibbet. He apparently commented to the hangman that the harbour views were the best he’d seen. Morgan’s skeleton was still hanging there four years later.
> In 1839 two American warships entered the harbour and circled Pinchgut Island. This friendly visit threw the colony into disarray. If it was so easy to enter the harbour undetected, a defensive fort was needed.
> Construction was slow. The sandstone islet was levelled by convicts, who quarried it to construct nearby Circular Quay, then gradually the fort took shape. It was finally completed in 1857. Named Fort Denison after the governor of NSW, it featured a distinctive Martello tower – the only one ever built in Australia and the last one constructed in the British Empire. Its round structure and thick high walls made the site perfect for a single piece of artillery. Unfortunately, by the time the fort was finished there had been great advances in rifled artillery which made the garrison rather useless. Despite its large muzzle loaders and guns the areas were too cramped inside to load them quickly and the openings in the battlements too small to allow effective targeting.


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## Pinky (May 21, 2022)

My 2nd husband makes a pinchgut appear generous.


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