The adjective jimp appears in both positive and negative contexts. It can be used to describe a person who is slim, neat, graceful or dainty, as in this quotation from Neil Munro's The New Road (1914): “Having still a jimp and girlish figure and a dauntless grip of youth”or this earlier one from Allan Ramsay's poem Christ's Kirk on the Green (1718): “Right weel red up, an' jimp she was”. 

Jimp can also apply to parts of a person rather than the whole; as in James Ballantine's The Gaberlunzie's Wallet (1844): “And thy wee feet, sae jimp an' tender” and in Burns' O Were I on Parnassus Hill: “I see thee dancing o'er the green, Thy waist sae jimp, thy limbs sae clean”. In the same vein there is also the compound jimp-waisted.

When applied to clothes, jimp means close-fitting or tight. For example, in this quote from William Paul's Past and Present in Aberdeenshire (1881), it's evidently a desirable feature: “I maun hae my goon made . . . jimp for my body”. It can also mean too tight, as shown by this explanation of its meaning from Berwickshire (1997): “Gey jimp — describes clothes which are too skimpy for the viewer's taste”.  

This leads us to jimp in the sense of scanty, meagre, or sparing.  In Alexander Hislop's Book of Scottish Anecdote (1875) we read: “The evidence is a wee bit jimp this time, so I'll let ye aff”, and in Charles M Stuart's Sandy Scott's Bible Class (1897): “The captain … was on the jimp side o' ceevility wi' Jonah”.

Finally, jimp can mean short of food or hungry, as illustrated by this Aberdeenshire quote from 1920: “Ye'll be feelin' gimp by this time. Here's tippence, laddie, gang and get a bit gingerbread”.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Ann Ferguson of Scottish Language Dictionaries