Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To work or dress (stone) roughly, preliminary to fine tooling.
from The Century Dictionary.
- In stone-working, to dress with a broad chisel or heavy pointed pick after pointing or broaching, and preparatory to finer dressing.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb See
scapple .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To roughly
dress stone.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Middle English scaplen, from Old North French escapler, to dress timber : es-, off (from Latin ex-; see ex–) + capler, to cut (from Vulgar Latin *capulāre, *cappulāre).]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Middle English scaplen, from Old French escapler ("to dress timber"), from es- ("off") (from Latin ex-) + capler ("to cut") (from Vulgar Latin *capulre, *cappulre).
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Examples
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Workers used a device like a pneumatic drill to "scabble" the concrete, knocking off the surface layer.
NYT > Home Page By MATTHEW L. WALD 2010
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Workers used a device like a pneumatic drill to "scabble" the concrete, knocking off the surface layer.
NYT > Home Page By MATTHEW L. WALD 2010
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I often play monkeys at scabble and win handsomely ... so its all old nuts to me
Braveheart Broon Mocks English Newmania 2007
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It seems that Alun had decided on a depiction of himself with a Welsh Language scabble board.
Archive 2006-10-01 Glyn Davies 2006
qms commented on the word scabble
It pleased folk in monoglot Babel
To quarry and stack and to scabble,
But all their ambition
Had one sad fruition:
Sweet discourse was blasted to gabble.
February 23, 2019