Stint

//stɪnt// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A period of time spent doing or being something; a spell.

    "He had a stint in jail."

  2. 2
    Any of several very small wading birds in the genus Calidris. Types of sandpiper, such as the dunlin or the sanderling.
  3. 3
    Misspelling of stent (“medical device”). alt-of, misspelling
  4. 4
    an individual's prescribed share of work wordnet
  5. 5
    Limit; bound; restraint; extent.

    "God has wrote upon no created thing the utmost stint of his power."

Show 4 more definitions
  1. 6
    smallest American sandpiper wordnet
  2. 7
    Quantity or task assigned; proportion allotted.

    "Jack bovv'd and vvas oblig'd—confeſs'd 'tvvas ſtrange / That ſo retir'd he ſhould not vviſh a change, / But knevv no medium betvveen guzzling beer, / And his old stint—three thouſand pounds a year."

  3. 8
    an unbroken period of time during which you do something wordnet
  4. 9
    A part of the race between two consecutive pit stops.

    "That left Maldonado with a 6.2-second lead. Alonso closed in throughout their third stints, getting the gap down to 4.2secs before Maldonado stopped for the final time on lap 41."

Verb
  1. 1
    To stop (an action); cease, desist. archaic, intransitive

    "We mon haue payne that neuer shall stynt"

  2. 2
    supply sparingly and with restricted quantities wordnet
  3. 3
    To stop speaking or talking (of a subject). intransitive, obsolete
  4. 4
    subsist on a meager allowance wordnet
  5. 5
    To be sparing or mean. intransitive

    "The next party you throw, don't stint on the beer."

Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    To restrain within certain limits; to bound; to restrict to a scant allowance. transitive

    "I shall not in the least go about to extenuate the Latitude of it: or to stint it only to the Produćtion of Weeds, of Thorns, Thisiles, and other the less useful Kinds of Plants"

  2. 7
    To assign a certain task to (a person), upon the performance of which he/she is excused from further labour for that day or period; to stent.
  3. 8
    To impregnate successfully; to get with foal.

    "The majority of maiden mares will become stinted while at work."

Synonyms

All synonyms
scrimpskimpstretchallotmentamountanchor

Example

More examples

"I met her during my stint there."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English stinten, from Old English styntan (“to make blunt”) and *stintan (attested in āstintan (“to make dull, stint, assuage”)), from Proto-West Germanic *stuntijan, from Proto-Germanic *stuntijaną and Proto-Germanic *stintaną (“to make short”), probably influenced in some senses by cognate Old Norse *stynta, stytta (“to make short, shorten”).

Etymology 2

Origin unknown.

Related phrases

Temminck's stintlittle stintlong-toed stintred-necked stintwading bird

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.