(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.
Scrap
Definition:
(v. t.) Something scraped off; hence, a small piece; a bit; a fragment; a detached, incomplete portion.
(v. t.) Specifically, a fragment of something written or printed; a brief excerpt; an unconnected extract.
(v. t.) The crisp substance that remains after drying out animal fat; as, pork scraps.
(v. t.) Same as Scrap iron, below.
Example Sentences:
(1) It is a moment to be grateful for what remains of Labour's hard left: an amendment to scrap the cap was at least tabled by John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn but stood no chance.
(2) As calls grew to establish why nobody stepped in to save Daniel, it was also revealed that the boy's headteacher – who saw him scavenging for scraps – has not been disciplined and has been put in charge of a bigger school.
(3) That means scrapping David Cameron’s unqualified teacher policy, which has produced a 16% increase in the number of unqualified teachers in our schools.
(4) Across a dusty lot sits a heap of scrap metal, patrolled by a couple of emaciated dogs, while a toddler squats in the street, examining the sole of a discarded shoe.
(5) Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, confirmed in his first media policy speech yesterday that Labour's plan for independently financed news consortiums would be scrapped .
(6) The prison suicide rate, at 120 deaths per 100,000 people, is about 10 times higher than the rate in the general population.” The report calls for a recently revised incentives and earned privileges regime to be scrapped and for an undertaking that prisoners with mental health problems or at known risk of suicide should never be placed in solitary.
(7) "They don't go to secondary school – they go out scrapping with horses and carts, and make a living from collecting metal.
(8) Clegg has called for a faster process towards increasing the personal tax allowance to £10,000, and the Treasury chief secretary, Danny Alexander, wants higher rate tax relief on pensions to be scrapped.
(9) In the interview, he also pledged to scrap the 5% rate of VAT on sanitary products, known as the “tampon tax”.
(10) We’ve sent out all the boards and there’s still loads of people flooding in, we don’t know what to do.’ It happened in Leeds North West, too – they started the day, they had so many activists that they went: ‘Right, let’s scrap our whole strategy, we’re going to just print off the electoral register instead’ – and rather than focusing on likely Labour voters, which is what you would normally do, they knocked on all the doors on the electoral register – that’s unheard of.” The seat saw a 14% swing to Labour, overturning a Lib Dem majority of almost 3,000 and replacing it with a 4,000 Labour lead.
(11) Wang Yongchen, who runs Green Earth Volunteers, one of China’s oldest environmental groups, cautioned that while the decision to scrap plans for dams on the Nu was a significant triumph, it was not necessarily a permanent one.
(12) Service providers say they will have no choice except to charge patients a co-payment for services such as blood tests after the federal government announced in its budget update that it would scrap incentives for pathology services, and reduce bulk billing incentives from 15% of the Medicare benefits schedule fee to 10% for diagnostics.
(13) The Times editor, James Harding, recently decided to revive the supplement following reader complaints at his decision to scrap it seven months earlier .
(14) Japan scrapped its original plan for the national stadium last month in the face of widespread outrage after costs ballooned to £1.34bn ($2.1bn), nearly twice the original estimates – an unusual move for an Olympic host city this late in the process.
(15) Time to scrap all honours everywhere, including UK.” Australians had their chance to ditch the monarchy in 1999.
(16) Scrapping the tax cuts for the wealthy alone would be enough to make up for the shortfall in social security; scrapping them entirely would halt the rise in the national debt over the next decade.
(17) The following summer, the coastal city Qidong scrapped a pipeline plan after about a thousand protesters stormed government offices and overturned cars.
(18) Mention of discrimination on the basis of categories such as ethnicity, migration status, culture, economic situation or age as a protected status were also scrapped from the document, in an attempt to appease the African and Arab groups.
(19) The announcement will mean scrapping a review process set up by Labor in October 2012 to examine the cases of 55 mostly Tamil refugees, deemed to be a threat by Asio.
(20) In his only specific growth measure, he said Britain's planning laws would have to be scrapped so more housing could be built, vowing to scrap "the suffocating bureaucracy" that he said was holding economic growth back.