Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A rogue; a rascal.
  • noun A mischievous youngster.
  • transitive verb To perform or make in a careless or inadequate way.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A fugitive or vagabond; a worthless fellow; a swindler; a mean villain; a rascal; a rogue.
  • noun A serranoid fish, Trisotropis falcatus, of a brown color with irregular darker spots, and with the pectorals edged with blackish and orange.
  • To execute in superficial manner; perform in a careless, slip-shod, dishonest, or perfunctory manner: as, to scamp work.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A rascal; a swindler; a rogue.
  • transitive verb colloq. To perform in a hasty, neglectful, or imperfect manner; to do superficially.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A rascal, swindler, or rogue; a ne'er-do-well.
  • noun A mischievous person, especially a playful, impish youngster.
  • verb dated To skimp; to do something in a skimpy or slipshod fashion.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb perform hastily and carelessly
  • noun one who is playfully mischievous

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably from scamp, to go about idly, probably from obsolete Dutch schampen, to decamp, from Middle Dutch ontscampen; see scamper.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Possibly of Scandinavian origin.]

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word scamp.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "Every night ever since I can remember I've seen mother kneeling by her bed to say her prayers, no matter how cold it was, though she never would buy herself good woollens, and never scamping them to less than five minutes. And what has she got for it? What has she got for it?"

    - Rebecca West, The Judge

    July 29, 2009