What's the difference between scrawl and scribble?

Scrawl


Definition:

  • (v. i.) See Crawl.
  • (v. t.) To draw or mark awkwardly and irregularly; to write hastily and carelessly; to scratch; to scribble; as, to scrawl a letter.
  • (v. i.) To write unskillfully and inelegantly.
  • (n.) Unskillful or inelegant writing; that which is unskillfully or inelegantly written.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Towards the end, as entire eras wheeled past in a blur, I realised the programme itself would outlive me, and began desperately scrawling notes that described the broadcast's initial few centuries for the benefit of any descendants hoping to pick up from where I left off.
  • (2) I got the job aged 19 because the manager had scrawled "Good hair!"
  • (3) Oscar Wilde's grave in Paris has put up with a lot in its first century - the flying angel headstone has been castrated (twice), commemorative candles have scorched the front, and multilingual graffiti are regularly scrawled over the tomb.
  • (4) The paintings by Klimt displayed on these pages are pieces of modern intellectual history to set beside a formula scrawled by Albert Einstein or a score by Arnold Schönberg.
  • (5) Shortly after Hopkins’s original message, Monroe, a contributor to the Guardian, tweeted in response: “I have NEVER ‘scrawled on a memorial’.
  • (6) They decided to go for it, and grew wise to the tabloid tactic of cropping out their banners – they began scrawling slogans directly on their breasts.
  • (7) The tone was light years from "fuck the rich" already scrawled on banks (and an Ann Summers sex shop) down the road.
  • (8) They arrived in a black Camaro with Dare (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) scrawled on its side in blazing faux graffiti, one officer explaining how his department had seized it from a drug dealer.
  • (9) Last month I was given unrestricted access to the enormous archive the PCGG has assembled in its years of global detective work: the president’s handwritten diary, frequently puffed with self-regard; the notepaper headed “From the office of the president”, with scribbled sums endlessly totting up his cash; minutes of company meetings with his comments scrawled in the margins; contracts; “side agreements”; records of multiple bank accounts; hundreds of share certificates; private investigators’ reports; and tens of thousands of pages of court judgments.
  • (10) At their wedding ceremony in 1985, Penn scrawled “Fuck off” in the sand at the media helicopters flying overhead.
  • (11) Iran-UK relations: 12 moments in a troubled history Read more Sitting a few feet from the scrawl, Philip Hammond, the first British foreign secretary to visit Iran for well over a decade, had come to reopen the embassy , and open a new chapter in Anglo-Iranian affairs.
  • (12) Facebook Twitter Pinterest A child plays in a destroyed Ukrainian tank, scrawled with the slogan Save the Donbass people from Ukrainian army.
  • (13) Spoofs are no longer one-off scrawls that fade on individual walls, but community in-jokes that take on a virtual life of their own.
  • (14) There was a predictable flurry of outrage; the then culture minister Kim Howells, commenting on the exhibition as a whole, scrawled "conceptual bullshit" across a Tate comment card and pinned it to the visitors' wall.
  • (15) He scrawls "black spider memos" to government ministers, calls secretaries of state into Clarence House for private conversations about policy, and writes confidential notes to high-level contacts to get planning matters changed.
  • (16) Fulham thought they'd secured the striker's scrawl, but it now seems that Big Sam might be on the verge of throwing a spanner in the works.
  • (17) On November 5, Chumlong Lemtongthai, a 43-year-old Thai national, put his tightly scrawled signature to a guilty plea that was submitted to a South African court.
  • (18) That includes the eight-year-old who scrawled his teacher's picture.
  • (19) Quite soon, I discovered I could balance a notebook on my knee and, with a pencil, scrawl notes about my experience in a big black notebook.
  • (20) He spots a scrawled reference to the legendary Tina Brown upside down in my notebook across his glass-topped desk.

Scribble


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To card coarsely; to run through the scribbling machine.
  • (v. t.) To write hastily or carelessly, without regard to correctness or elegance; as, to scribble a letter.
  • (v. t.) To fill or cover with careless or worthless writing.
  • (v. i.) To write without care, elegance, or value; to scrawl.
  • (n.) Hasty or careless writing; a writing of little value; a scrawl; as, a hasty scribble.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) When war broke out he was there again, scribbling anti-British propaganda for Coughlin's journal.
  • (2) When he eventually walked to the podium, the typed final version was once more full of crossings out and scribbles.
  • (3) The significance of two handwritten numbers scribbled almost imperceptibly on the back had been overlooked until now.
  • (4) Steve Cole is best known as the ever-scribbling, slightly crazy author of the Astrosaurs book series – featuring dinosaurs in space – as well as Cows in Action and The Slime Squad.
  • (5) Last month I was given unrestricted access to the enormous archive the PCGG has assembled in its years of global detective work: the president’s handwritten diary, frequently puffed with self-regard; the notepaper headed “From the office of the president”, with scribbled sums endlessly totting up his cash; minutes of company meetings with his comments scrawled in the margins; contracts; “side agreements”; records of multiple bank accounts; hundreds of share certificates; private investigators’ reports; and tens of thousands of pages of court judgments.
  • (6) Well, it’s one way to stop your toddlers scribbling on the wall.
  • (7) I remember being so stunned by the figure I scribbled it at the top of my notebook, as a reminder to ask him about it.
  • (8) Jamie Jackson is our man on the Manchester beat and he's been reading Moyes's scribblings for the benefit of those of us not lucky enough to be at Old Trafford tonight.
  • (9) It was time for Mourinho to reach for the hotel scribbling pad to plan for the future and Barcelona to celebrate their superiority in a four-game series that threatened to relocate to the politics pages, and leaves a pile of disciplinary issues still to face.
  • (10) Foremost among them is the unique position of power that officers of the law are placed in, by the role that the scribbled remarks in their logbooks play in defining the facts.
  • (11) Then I saw he had scribbled out a mistake in Jamie's name.
  • (12) It wasn't to scribble compromises on the back of a pizza box.
  • (13) That curve was famously scribbled by Laffer on a napkin over cocktails with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in 1974, and helped underpin Reagan’s so-called trickle-down economics – as well as launching Laffer’s career as one of the most influential economists in Republican circles.
  • (14) The envelope on which the calculations were scribbled has apparently been thrown away.
  • (15) A few days earlier Richard Helms, director of the CIA, had scribbled notes on a meeting in Washington with Nixon, Kissinger and John Mitchell, the US attorney general, where the president demanded a coup.
  • (16) Coming back to the novel now, in my early 30s, is like discovering an old diary: in the writing of her four experimental notebooks, Anna puts her politics and personal life under reflexive scrutiny, with constant self-questioning; in the turned-down corners and scribbled margins of certain of those pages, I tried to do the same.
  • (17) Then I ask: “Why are you there?” This time, I get an answer: “Interview requests must be registered in advance, on this side as on yours.” Lines scribbled in my notebook.
  • (18) She hears one of Castro's guerrillas or an Algerian freedom fighter ask "Why aren't you doing something about us, instead of wasting your time scribbling?"
  • (19) As Mr Cowell and Mr Fuller rattled through their idea for an ambitious new show to identify an unknown British singing star, Boyd scribbled notes on two sides of jotting paper during the hour-long meeting.
  • (20) He shakes my hand with a wordless nod and I scribble a brief impression in my notebook: "glazed eyes".