feel the pinch
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Experience financial difficulty or hardship
Literally: feel a sharp pain
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Now Argos, our biggest cut - price catalogues group, is feeling the pinch.
Naturally, the loss of this sort of money is a blow to us, but every club is feeling the pinch.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “feel the pinch” mean?
Experience financial difficulty or hardship Literally: feel a sharp pain
Is “feel the pinch” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.