scrat
English
editPronunciation
edit- IPA(key): /skɹæt/
Audio (Southern England): (file) - Rhymes: -æt
Etymology 1
editFrom Middle English scratten. Origin uncertain; apparently related to Swedish kratta (“to rake”). Also compare German kratzen (“to scratch”).
Verb
editscrat (third-person singular simple present scrats, present participle scratting, simple past and past participle scratted)
- (obsolete) To scratch; to use one's nails or claws.
- 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:, New York Review of Books, 2001, p.286:
- Euclio […] as he went from home, seeing a crow scrat upon the muck-hill, returned in all haste, taking it for malum omen, an ill sign […].
- (obsolete, UK) To rake; to search.
- 1978, A.S. Byatt, The Virgin in The Garden, Vintage International, published 1992, page 89:
- He himself had scratted in the thin dust of evangelical tracts.
Etymology 2
editCompare Old English scritta (“a hermaphrodite”), which had an earlier sense of "effeminate person, castrated man," presumably related to sċieran (“to cut”). Liberman notes that Germanic glossators, not familiar with Ovid, did not know exactly how to translate Latin hermaphroditus and instead matched it with more native words related to sexual deficiencies.[1]
Noun
editscrat (plural scrats)
- (obsolete) A hermaphrodite.
- 1649, Thomas Johnson, The Workes of that Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey:
- three on the right side for males , three on the left side for femals , and one in the midst for Hermophrodices or Scrats
References
edit- ^ An Analytic Dictionary of the English Etymology: An Introduction. (n.d.). United Kingdom: U of Minnesota Press, p. 59
Etymology 3
editFrom Middle English scrat, from Old English *scrætt, from Proto-Germanic *skrattuz (“troll, forest monster”). Compare German Schratt and Old Norse skratti.
Noun
editscrat (plural scrats)
Related terms
editPart or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “scrat”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)
Anagrams
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