Classics on the Billboard
How Scrooge became a word for a miser
Call a stingy friend a Scrooge and you are naming a London businessman invented by Charles Dickens.
On the billboard
English dictionaries list scrooge as a common noun for a miserly person who hates spending money. Disney's wealthy duck Scrooge McDuck takes his name from the same character. He is the duck who swims in a vault full of coins.
In the book A Christmas Carol · Charles Dickens
In Dickens's A Christmas Carol, when his nephew wishes him a merry Christmas, Scrooge answers: "Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!" That night the ghost of Marley, his partner who died seven years before, comes dragging a chain. That is where the story begins.