Scrabble

//ˈskɹæbəl// name, noun, verb

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A board game in which players draw letter tiles and take turns to make interlocking words like a crossword, scoring points according to the letters played and their positions on the board.

    "So that's what's in the forbidden room! Scrabble! I want to laugh, shriek with laughter, fall off my chair. This was once the game of old women, old men, in the summers or in retirement villas, to be played when there was nothing good on television. Or of adolescents, once, long long ago. […] Now of course it's something different. Now it's forbidden, for us."

Noun
  1. 1
    A scramble.

    "a scrabble for dear life"

  2. 2
    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 wordnet
  3. 3
    an aimless drawing wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To scrape or scratch powerfully with hands or claws. intransitive

    "[…] there came no answer, except the echo of my own voice sounding hollow and far off down in the vault. So in despair I turned back to the earth wall below the slab, and scrabbled at it with my fingers, till my nails were broken and the blood ran out; having all the while a sure knowledge, like a cord twisted round my head, that no effort of mine could ever dislodge the great stone."

  2. 2
    write down quickly without much attention to detail wordnet
  3. 3
    To gather hastily. transitive

    "“Oh. The perfect ending to the perfect-- [chuckles] I almost said evening. More like months, though, isn't it? Since we started scrabbling for coins because the damn government took away our-- every thing. They took everything. And the only thing that was left, you idiots either lost, gave away, ate, or just blew up and sank.”"

  4. 4
    feel searchingly wordnet
  5. 5
    To move with difficulty by making rapid movements back and forth with the hands or paws. intransitive

    "She was on her hands and knees scrabbling in the mud, looking for her missing wedding ring."

Show 2 more definitions
  1. 6
    To scribble. intransitive

    "David […] scrabbled on the doors of the gate."

  2. 7
    To mark with irregular lines or letters; to scribble on. transitive

    "to scrabble paper"

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle Dutch schrabbelen, frequentative of schrabben (“to scrape”), equivalent to scrab + -le. More at scrape.

Etymology 2

From Middle Dutch schrabbelen, frequentative of schrabben (“to scrape”), equivalent to scrab + -le. More at scrape.

Etymology 3

A brand name, from the verb scrabble, James Brunot's rebranding (1948) of Alfred Butts's game Criss-Crosswords (1938).

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