Other forms: scabs
A scab is the hard crust that forms over a healing wound. Pick the scab, a scab formed, the scab came off.
It is dried blood and clotting proteins sealing the wound while new skin grows underneath, and picking it delays healing and can scar. It falls off by itself when the work is done. In industrial relations, a scab is somebody who works during a strike, and it is among the strongest insults in that world. Note scabby; and that the word is Old English and Old Norse both.
1nounscabThe hard crust that forms over a healing wound.
“A week after the fall, a dark scab had formed over the cut on his elbow.”
2nounworksSomebody who works during a strike.
“The strikers called him a scab for crossing the picket line to go to work.”
scab is a wound crust, or a strikebreaker.
Old English sceabb and Old Norse skabb both come from a Germanic root about scratching. Shabby comes from the same word by another route.
Proto-Indo-European
*skabʰ- — to cut, split, carve, shape
Proto-Germanic
*skabbaz — scab, scabies
Old Norse
skabb
Old English
sċeabb
Middle English
scabb
English, today
scab
From Middle English scabb, scabbe (also as shabbe, schabbe > English shab), from Old English sċeabb and Old Norse skabb, both from Proto-Germanic skabbaz (“scab, scabies”), from Proto-Indo-European skabʰ- (“to cut, split, carve, shape”). a doublet of shab. Cognate with German Schabe (“scabies”), Danish skab (“scab, scabies”), Swedish skabb (“scab, scabies”), Latin scabies (“scab, itch, mange”). Related also to Old English scafan (“to scrape, shave”), Latin scabere (“to scratch”), English shabby.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA