Scrooge

Scrooge refers to a surname and to several figures in literature and popular culture. The most prominent is Ebenezer Scrooge, the central character in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843). He is depicted as a miserly English businessman who hoards wealth and regards others with contempt until he is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The encounters lead to a moral transformation, and he becomes more generous. The phrase “Bah! Humbug!” is closely associated with him and has entered common usage as a critique of insincerity or miserliness.

A second well-known figure is Scrooge McDuck, a Disney character created by Carl Barks and introduced in 1947. Scrooge McDuck is a billionaire duck renowned for his adventurous exploits and his Money Bin, and he serves as a parallel to the Ebenezer Scrooge archetype while remaining a distinct character within the Disney universe.

In English, the word scrooge has come to mean a stingy or miserly person. The term preserves the association with Dickensian character traits and is used to describe frugality taken to an extreme.

Geographically, Scrooge is also the name of a village in Lincolnshire, England. The village is part of local place-name usage and has occasionally appeared in adaptations and references related to Dickens’s works.

Film and television adaptations of A Christmas Carol have used Scrooge as the title or focal character, including the 1951 British film Scrooge and the 1970 musical Scrooge, both rooted in Dickens's story.