What does "scrapie" mean?

A degenerative prion disease of sheep and goats that attacks the central nervous system.

Scrapie

//ˈskɹeɪpi// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A degenerative prion disease of sheep and goats that attacks the central nervous system. countable, uncountable
"This incurable disease, called scrapie, became a large problem, often killing one ewe in ten."
2
a fatal disease of sheep characterized by chronic itching and loss of muscular control and progressive degeneration of the central nervous system wordnet

"This incurable disease, called scrapie, became a large problem, often killing one ewe in ten."

From scrape + -ie, from the tendency of affected animals to scrape themselves against solid objects.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.