(v. t.) To scrape, paw, or scratch with the hands; to proceed by clawing with the hands and feet; to scramble; as, to scrabble up a cliff or a tree.
(v. t.) To make irregular, crooked, or unmeaning marks; to scribble; to scrawl.
(v. t.) To mark with irregular lines or letters; to scribble; as, to scrabble paper.
(n.) The act of scrabbling; a moving upon the hands and knees; a scramble; also, a scribble.
Example Sentences:
(1) Even a Scrabble board is used as a weapon in our show.
(2) But I'm starting with the job that I can do something about right now – scrabbling around on the floor, picking up three-inch nails and cigarette butts so that the new four-year-olds will have somewhere safe to play at break.
(3) While all this is going on, the new Syriza-led government of cash-starved Greece will be scrabbling for every last cent to repay the next €450m (£330m) instalment of the country’s loan from the IMF.
(4) People who never dreamed that one day they would not be able to pay their electricity bill, or feed their children properly.” As it has scrabbled for every last cent to satisfy its creditors and ward off bankruptcy, Greece’s government has taken cash wherever it could – local authorities, healthcare, pensions, social services have all been tapped.
(5) "I think it does feel as if everybody is still scrabbling trying to work out which model works best but it is not as wild as it was," she said.
(6) A rise in government spending to cope with higher social security bills, combined with a fall in tax receipts, has left the Treasury scrabbling to meet its borrowing target for the end of the year.
(7) Our Scrabble board had Velcro on the back, as did each alphabet piece.
(8) The new movie marks a partial return to the thematic territory of Rosetta , which concerned a teenage girl scrabbling around for menial jobs.
(9) Valdés was so unprepared after De Gea had strained his hamstring that the game was delayed by almost three minutes as he scrabbled to get his kit ready.
(10) Meanwhile, there is the unseemly scrabble, documented by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, for the very wealthiest to hold on to those increasingly scarce stable professions that guarantee a large income and access to social goods at the very top of society ( theguardian.com , 26 July).
(11) Spain is scrabbling to meet a deficit target of 3.7% by the end of the financial year while the UK's is likely to still be above 6%.
(12) They shot from the balcony.” “Everyone scrabbled to the ground.
(13) That is the reason I was scrabbling in the playground, picking up nails.
(14) If Labour scrapes in via a Lib Dem coalition, as looks likely, the Lib Dems will be scrabbling around to appoint someone female.
(15) The fact that researchers have concluded that there is “ no benefit to attending a grammar school for high-attaining pupils ” makes the unedifying scrabble even more sad.
(16) He continued to live off his notoriety, posing for photographs with tourists in exchange for money, selling souvenir T-shirts that commemorated his escapes, scrabbling for crumbs from the media table and charging tourists £40 for a barbecue at his house.
(17) Why do we have to scrabble around for spare cash to counteract cartoonishly unjust policies such as the bedroom tax that attempt to balance Britain’s books at the expense of predominantly poor disabled people, they wonder.
(18) Perhaps, more importantly, the success of the iPhone has also made Apple massively influential in the competitive mobile market, with its rivals scrabbling to build their own phones that mimic the iPhone's touch-sensitive screen, downloadable applications and user-friendly web browsing.
(19) Users can now give gifts to friends, post free classified advertisements and even develop their own applications - graffiti and Scrabble are particularly popular.
(20) And, like Steve, their housing benefit will be docked, so they will be left scrabbling just to make the rent and keep a roof above their heads.
Scramble
Definition:
(v. i.) To clamber with hands and knees; to scrabble; as, to scramble up a cliff; to scramble over the rocks.
(v. i.) To struggle eagerly with others for something thrown upon the ground; to go down upon all fours to seize something; to catch rudely at what is desired.
(v. t.) To collect by scrambling; as, to scramble up wealth.
(v. t.) To prepare (eggs) as a dish for the table, by stirring the yolks and whites together while cooking.
(n.) The act of scrambling, climbing on all fours, or clambering.
(n.) The act of jostling and pushing for something desired; eager and unceremonious struggle for what is thrown or held out; as, a scramble for office.
Example Sentences:
(1) In documents due to be published by the bank, it will signal a need to shed costs from a business that employs 10,000 people as it scrambles to return to profit.
(2) Finally, the data prove that the actin I gene in O. trifallax is scrambled in a pattern that resembles the pattern in O. nova.
(3) Another example is the death in 1817 of Princess Charlotte, in childbirth, which led to the scramble of George III's aging sons to marry and beget an heir to the throne.
(4) A man who had been near them reached the hotel terrace first, scrambling up a steep sandy bank.
(5) The influx of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and several African and Balkan countries has strained local governments, which have scrambled to house the newcomers in old schools, office blocks and army barracks.
(6) Goren, Sarty, and Wu (1975) claimed that newborn infants will follow a slowly moving schematic face stimulus with their head and eyes further than they will follow scrambled faces or blank stimuli.
(7) Cohen crossed the ball long from the right and Hurst rose magnificently to deflect in another header which Tilkowski could only scramble away from his right hand post, Ball turned the ball back into the goalmouth and the German’s desperation was unmistakable as Overath came hurtling in to scythe the ball away for a corner.
(8) LDLLFL-mediated inhibition was sequence specific because the reverse peptide LFLLDL and scrambled peptides were not inhibitory.
(9) I honestly think so many Americans are scrambling so fast just to keep up that: a) they're not aware of what they're missing; b) they don't have time to agitate."
(10) Young and elderly adults' performance was compared on the Landmark Selection Task, designed to assess perceptual selection, and the Scrambled Route Task, designed to assess temporospatial integration.
(11) Yet, the White House appears to be scrambling to set up infrastructure that can support such a conversation and has placed its trust in a body with a chequered history of independent scrutiny.
(12) Refugees scramble for ways into Europe as Hungary seals borders Read more Habbal was one of at least 16 applicants to be rejected on Tuesday, and he claimed that each person was turned down in a maximum 20 minutes, after a series of perfunctory questions about their country of origin and route to Hungary.
(13) Results from experiments involving alkylation of cysteine residues are compatible with the possibilities that in aFGF all three cysteines exist as free sulfhydryls, or alternatively, that a disulfide bridge is present but cannot be identified due to disulfide scrambling caused by the SH group of the remaining cysteine.
(14) Losing at Old Trafford will obviously mean missing the first of those targets and could also have a knock-on effect on the scramble for the top four.
(15) A scramble is on to find suitable empty properties, from rooms in private homes, to sports halls and disused school buildings to derelict soldiers’ barracks, even inflatable circus tents.
(16) Latvian aeroplanes were scrambled five times in 2010; in 2014 that figure was over a hundred, as Russian planes swooped into Baltic airspace.
(17) Following a scramble of phone calls between the chief of the defence staff, General Sir David Richards, and General John Allen, commander of International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan , the minister insisted that no major strategic change had been made in policy towards Afghan allies.
(18) One said EU officials were left scrambling to find out if it was “legally and logistically possible”, while another diplomat said it was “naive” to think that such a complex plan could be agreed so quickly.
(19) The following day, politicians and eurocrats began scrambling to hammer out a larger rescue package for Greece: 28 April 2010 Photograph: Guardian That was the time when puns about Acropolis Now, and ‘making a drachma out of a crisis’ were in vogue: Greek debt crisis, 28 April 2010 Photograph: Guardian But there wasn’t much time for jokes.
(20) The Labour leader’s aides scrambled on to a conference call to work out a plan to deal with the rebellion.