(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.
Scrape
Definition:
(v. t.) To rub over the surface of (something) with a sharp or rough instrument; to rub over with something that roughens by removing portions of the surface; to grate harshly over; to abrade; to make even, or bring to a required condition or form, by moving the sharp edge of an instrument breadthwise over the surface with pressure, cutting away excesses and superfluous parts; to make smooth or clean; as, to scrape a bone with a knife; to scrape a metal plate to an even surface.
(v. t.) To remove by rubbing or scraping (in the sense above).
(v. t.) To collect by, or as by, a process of scraping; to gather in small portions by laborious effort; hence, to acquire avariciously and save penuriously; -- often followed by together or up; as, to scrape money together.
(v. t.) To express disapprobation of, as a play, or to silence, as a speaker, by drawing the feet back and forth upon the floor; -- usually with down.
(v. i.) To rub over the surface of anything with something which roughens or removes it, or which smooths or cleans it; to rub harshly and noisily along.
(v. i.) To occupy one's self with getting laboriously; as, he scraped and saved until he became rich.
(v. i.) To play awkwardly and inharmoniously on a violin or like instrument.
(v. i.) To draw back the right foot along the ground or floor when making a bow.
(n.) The act of scraping; also, the effect of scraping, as a scratch, or a harsh sound; as, a noisy scrape on the floor; a scrape of a pen.
(n.) A drawing back of the right foot when bowing; also, a bow made with that accompaniment.
(n.) A disagreeable and embarrassing predicament out of which one can not get without undergoing, as it were, a painful rubbing or scraping; a perplexity; a difficulty.
Example Sentences:
(1) In invasive epidermoid carcinoma, the accuracy with the self-collected specimens approached the physician-scraped specimens.
(2) A microsomal preparation containing labeled endocytic vesicles was prepared by cell scraping, homogenization, and differential centrifugation.
(3) We compared two noninvasive methods of sampling exfoliated cervical cells--cervicovaginal lavage and scrape-Cytobrush.
(4) We therefore surveyed patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) regarding early adult consumption of fruits and vegetables usually eaten raw, with seeds that are swallowed or scraped with the teeth.
(5) The heads were examined for adult and larval meningeal worms (Parelaphostrongylus tenuis) by physical examination of the brain surfaces, and the Baermann technique, respectively, and for ear mites by examination of ear scrapings.
(6) He was competing in his third Boston marathon, and he came away with a scraped knee and a feeling of shock.
(7) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
(8) Psoriatic skin scales, non-sterile and sterile, were tested for stimulatory effect on PMNs and compared with the effect of normal skin scrapings.
(9) Our data provide the first evidence in humans that significant inflammatory changes in conjunctival scrapings are present long after allergen exposure has ended.
(10) This was partly because of its composition, scraped together from around the world but without the backing of Arab and Muslim leaders.
(11) Read more on Scottish independence • ' I believe in solidarity with the folk living south of Carlisle ' • ' The UK is on shifting sands – we can't assume survival ' • ' Better Together is truly scraping the barrel now ' The fact is that far from fearing the breakup of the UK, the English are looking at the benefits that devolution has brought the Scots and asking why they are not able to enjoy the same.
(12) Cellular abnormalities were demonstrated in 90.4% of women having scrapings of visible lesions and in 88.1% of women studied by 4-quadrant vaginal scrapings in the absence of clinical disease.
(13) These problems were met by introducing the indicator into the cells with the scrape-loading technique adapted for use with Dictyostelium and the construction of a new fura-2 derivative, fura-2-dextran.
(14) The overlying superficial and wing cells were removed by mechanical scraping to expose basal cells attached to their basal lamina.
(15) Scrapes detected more HPV 18 (10% vs. 2%, P = less than 0.05) and HPV 31 (7% vs. 3%, not significant) than did the biopsies, but biopsies detected more HPV 16 (42% vs. 33%, not significant).
(16) Epithelial cells were scraped from the tonsillar surfaces of 15 patients with current acute tonsillitis (AT) and of 15 individually matched healthy persons.
(17) We compared swab and scraping (Rhino-probe) technics in the nasal cytology obtention for eosinophils count in 36 patients with a range of 2-46 years old (mean age 18.6 years) with diagnosis of Allergic Rhinitis.
(18) Morphologically distinguishable differences in enamel at the occlusal site was examined as to whether the tooth is treated by acid solution, low-viscosity acid gel, or high-viscosity acid gel as well as the extent of involvement, using either a conventional or scraping method of application.
(19) Fifteen New Zealand white rabbits underwent laparotomy, with scrape and cut lesions created bilaterally on the uterine body and horns, respectively.
(20) The conjunctival sheets were cultured on epithelial-scraped corneal stromal carriers in vitro.