Other forms: scrabbling
To scrabble is to scratch and grab about with your hands in a hurry. Coins going everywhere under a café table and four people scrabbling on the floor for them.
You scrabble AT a surface — fingers scrabbling at a locked door — you scrabble FOR something in the dark, and you scrabble UP a slope on your hands and knees. Animals scrabble too: claws skidding on a wooden floor. Away from hands, it means struggling in an undignified way for something in short supply: parties scrabbling for votes, scrabbling to make the rent. Written with a capital S, Scrabble is the board game where you build words on a lettered grid, and since it is a brand name the capital stays.
1verbscrabbleTo scratch or grope about hurriedly with the hands or claws.
“He scrabbled at the mud, trying to get a grip on the bank.”
2verbstruggleTo struggle in a rushed, undignified way to get something.
“Three parties are scrabbling for the same handful of seats.”
3noungameThe board game in which players build words on a lettered grid.
“They played Scrabble at the kitchen table every Sunday.”
Scrabble was borrowed from Middle Dutch schrabbelen, the repeated-action form of schrabben, to scrape. That -le ending is the one English puts on verbs that happen over and over — nibble, dribble, wriggle — so to scrabble is to scrape again and again, fast. The same root lies behind English scrape.
Middle Dutch
schrabbelen
English, today
scrabble
Built from
From Middle Dutch schrabbelen, from schrabben. From Middle Dutch schrabbelen, frequentative of schrabben (“to scrape”), equivalent to scrab + -le. More at scrape.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 5 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word