Other forms: scrambled, scrambling, scrambles
To scramble eggs is to break them into a hot pan and stir until they set in soft yellow lumps. Scrambled eggs on toast, a wooden spoon going round and round, the heat kept low so they do not turn rubbery.
Away from the stove, scramble means to move fast and clumsily, hands as well as feet: you scramble up a bank, scramble out of bed, scramble for the last seat on the train. It also means to jumble something so it cannot be read — scrambled letters in a puzzle, a scrambled signal. Fighter pilots scramble when they are sent up in a hurry, and the noun keeps that rush: a scramble for tickets, a mad scramble to the door. Everything about the word is hurried and out of order, which is exactly what happens to the eggs.
1verbscrambleTo cook eggs by stirring them in a pan until they set.
“He scrambled four eggs and burnt the toast.”
Patternscramble eggs · scrambled eggs · scramble sth in a pan
2verbclimbTo climb or move quickly using your hands as well as your feet.
“They scrambled over the rocks to reach the beach.”
3verbmixTo mix something up so that it cannot be read or understood.
“The software scrambles the file before sending it.”
4nounhurriedA hurried, disorganised rush for something.
“There was a scramble for seats when the doors opened.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
SCRAMBLE → eggs mixed up like a crowd running for the ball
Everyone runs for the ball at once and it is a scramble; eggs stirred in the pan until they are all mixed up are scrambled too.
Nobody knows where scramble came from. The best guesses are an old dialect verb scrammel, 'to collect or rake together with the hands', or a nasalised form of scrabble, 'to scrape or scratch quickly'. Either way the picture behind it is the same: hands moving fast and grabbing.
Built from
Origin unknown. Perhaps from earlier dialectal scramble, scrammel (“to collect or rake together with the hands”), from scramb + -le (compare Dutch schrammen (“to graze, brush, scratch”)); or alternatively from a nasalised form of scrabble (“to scrape or scratch quickly”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA