Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To write (a note, for example) hurriedly without heed to legibility or style.
  • intransitive verb To draw (a picture) hurriedly or carelessly.
  • intransitive verb To write in a hurried careless way.
  • intransitive verb To make meaningless marks, as with a pen or pencil.
  • noun Careless hurried writing.
  • noun Meaningless marks and lines.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To write with haste, or without care or regard to correctness or elegance: as, to scribble a letter or pamphlet.
  • To cover or fill with careless or worthless writing, or unintelligible and entangled lines.
  • To write without care or regard for correctness or elegance; scrawl; make unintelligible and entangled lines on paper or a slate for mere amusement, as a child does.
  • noun Hurried or careless writing; a scrawl; hence, a shallow or trivial composition or article: as, a hasty scribble.
  • noun [In the following quotation the word is used figuratively for a hurried, scrambling manner of walking, opposed to “a set pace,” as a scribble is to “a set copy.”
  • To card or tease coarsely; pass, as cotton or wool, through a scribbler.

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

  • transitive verb To write hastily or carelessly, without regard to correctness or elegance.
  • transitive verb To fill or cover with careless or worthless writing.
  • intransitive verb To write without care, elegance, or value; to scrawl.
  • noun Hasty or careless writing; a writing of little value; a scrawl.
  • transitive verb (Woolen Manuf.) To card coarsely; to run through the scribbling machine.

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

  • verb To write or draw carelessly and in a hurry
  • verb To doodle
  • verb obsolete To card or tease (wool) coarsely; to run through a scribbler.
  • noun Careless, hasty writing or drawing

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

  • verb write carelessly
  • noun an aimless drawing
  • verb write down quickly without much attention to detail
  • noun poor handwriting

Etymologies

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

[Middle English scriblen, probably from scriben, to write, from Latin scrībere, to write; see skrībh- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From early modern English scrible, frequentive of scribe.

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