Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To scrape or grope about frenetically with the hands or paws.
  • intransitive verb To move or climb with scrambling, disorderly haste.
  • intransitive verb To struggle or work hard in a disorderly or desperate fashion.
  • intransitive verb To write hastily or make disordered markings; scribble.
  • intransitive verb To make or obtain by frenetic or desperate action.
  • intransitive verb To scrape or scratch (a surface).
  • intransitive verb To move or arrange hastily with the hands.
  • intransitive verb To scribble or write down hastily.
  • noun The act or an instance of scrabbling.
  • noun A scribble; a doodle.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A moving on the hands and knees; a scramble.
  • To scrape, scratch, or paw with the hands; move along on the hands and knees; crawl; scramble: as, to scrabble up a cliff or a tree.
  • To scramble or struggle to catch something.
  • To make irregular, crooked, or unmeaning marks; scrawl; scribble.
  • To scrape or gather hastily: with up, together, or the like.

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

  • intransitive verb To scrape, paw, or scratch with the hands; to proceed by clawing with the hands and feet; to scramble.
  • intransitive verb To make irregular, crooked, or unmeaning marks; to scribble; to scrawl.
  • transitive verb To mark with irregular lines or letters; to scribble.
  • noun The act of scrabbling; a moving upon the hands and knees; a scramble; also, a scribble.

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

  • verb To scrape or scratch powerfully with hands or claws.
  • verb intransitive To move something about by making rapid movements back and forth with the hands or paws.
  • verb To scribble.

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

  • noun an aimless drawing
  • noun a board game in which words are formed from letters in patterns similar to a crossword puzzle; each letter has a value and those values are used to score the game
  • verb feel searchingly
  • verb write down quickly without much attention to detail

Etymologies

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

[Dutch schrabbelen, from Middle Dutch, frequentative of schrabben, to scrape; see sker- in Indo-European roots.]

Support

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

Examples

  • But have you ever been able to share your love for a fellow word nerd in scrabble talk?

    blog – syllable studio 2009

  • No wait it's scrabble rules i've won the states with the most states that have more value in scrabble rules 'Idiots.

    Clinton: Democratic nomination process needs to change 2008

  • A game of scrabble is underway, and there is much laughter and good feeling here in the relative quiet and isolation of the Jakes salt-water pool area.

    Calabash–Second Day and Night : Kwame Dawes : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

  • Scrabble for the iPad features all the joy and wonder of the classic word scrabble game, with the ability to play alone or with friends via Facebook or the new Party Play mode.

    Kotaku Stephen Totilo 2010

  • In fact, the scrabble is the sound of parents who trusted the system's '' we give your child all the education it needs '', then realised too late half the kids in the class had been on seven hours 'coaching a week since kindy.

    The Sydney Morning Herald News Headlines 2010

  • Scrabble for the iPad features all the joy and wonder of the classic word scrabble game, with the ability to play alone or with friends via Facebook or the new Party Play mode.

    RSSMicro Search - Top News on RSS Feeds 2010

  • It might also have to do with having been the underdog for so long so that women kind of scrabble in these different jobs.

    The End Of The Macho Man? 2010

  • Sit around a lot playing computer games such as scrabble or casino games while thinking about what constructive things you should be doing.

    Janice Taylor: The Best 'Stay Fat' Strategies 2008

  • A madman would be more likely to hammer than to "scrabble" on the great double-leaved gate.

    The Life of David As Reflected in His Psalms Alexander Maclaren 1868

  • They did the impossible again, when they assembled a rag-tag scrabble of an army under an inexperienced commanding general and proceeded to defeat the world’s greatest military power of the time in a long and arduous struggle against guns, weather, poverty and demoralization, for the prize of freedom and the opportunity to start anew.

    Al Gore's Inaugural Address: January 20, 2009 2007

Comments

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

  • My best scrabble word was vixenish. Post your best (i.e. those you're most proud of) scrabble words here.

    November 30, 2007

  • I once played tequila.

    February 1, 2008

  • But I bet she survived!

    groan

    A couple that spring to mind are jungly and anaerobe.

    February 1, 2008

  • Mine was paraquat. The q was on the board and I hit a triple-triple through it.

    February 1, 2008

  • Gawd, mollusque, how do you remember that?!

    March 4, 2008

  • Let me count the ways...

    March 4, 2008

  • Using all 100 tiles of a Scrabble set (and designating the blanks as particular letters), create a list of words so that the list is as short as possible.

    FIBS

    JOKERS

    WOWING

    UNEXpOSED

    VIVIPERFUSION

    ZOOGEOGRAPHICaLLY

    QUADRATOMANDIBULAR

    ETHYLENEDIAMINETETRAACETATE

    From LOGOLOG.

    June 2, 2008

  • A sentence constructed with the 100 letter-tiles of Scrabble:

    COUNTRYMEN, I AM TO BURY, NOT EULOGIZE, CAESAR; IF EVIL LIVES ON, BEQUEATHING INJURY, GOOD OFT EXPIRES: A PALSIED, AWKWARD DEATH!

    From futilitycloset.com

    March 14, 2009

  • See lexulous.com for an online scrabble-type game. It used to be named Scrabulous and was available on Facebook (it was removed after Hasbro brought suit--later dropped--against the creators.)

    March 15, 2009

  • I've been tagging capital letters with the points they're worth and the number of times they occur in the set of Scrabble tiles (for English), but I'm wondering whether there's a more useful way to categorize them here on Wordnik. Has someone figured it out already? I've seen a couple of lists of two-letter words (and even banned words). Any suggestions?

    January 3, 2010