Scug

//skʌɡ// noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Shade, shadow. Northern-England, Scotland
  2. 2
    A shelter, a sheltered place (especially on the side of a hill). Northern-England, Scotland

    "We was jickering along […] under the scug o' the hill."

  3. 3
    A squirrel. dialectal

    ""Let's go scug-hunting" is a common phrase. […] a stick with a leaden head, used for knocking down birds and scugs (squirrels)."

  4. 4
    A lower-school or inferior boy. dated, slang

    "[…] before the lower school scugs got there, and pitched it in at Acropolis."

Verb
  1. 1
    To shelter; to protect. Northern-England, Scotland, transitive
  2. 2
    To hide; to take shelter. Northern-England, Scotland, intransitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
squirrelsquirrel

Example

More examples

"We was jickering along […] under the scug o' the hill."

Etymology

Scottish and Northern English from Old Norse skuggi, from Proto-Germanic *skuwwô (“shadow, reflection”). Cognate with Icelandic skuggi, Swedish skugga, Danish skygge, Old English sċūa, sċūwa (“a shade”).

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