scratch

UK/skɹæt͡ʃ/US/skɹæt͡ʃ/

verbB15 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,587 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: scratched, scratching, scratches

To scratch is to drag your nails over your skin because it itches. The mosquito bite you cannot leave alone, a dog scratching behind its ear with a back leg, someone scratching their head while they think.

Scratch also means to leave a thin line on a hard surface: a key scratches a car door, a cat scratches the arm of the sofa, and glasses come out of your bag scratched. As a noun it is both that mark and a small injury, so a car can come away with a scratch and so can you. Two set phrases carry the word far beyond nails. Making a cake from scratch means starting with flour and eggs and nothing ready-made, and up to scratch means good enough. You can also scratch a runner or a horse from a race, which is to pull them out before it begins.

Definitions of scratch

1verbscratchTo rub your nails over your skin because it itches.B1~12%
“Try not to scratch the bite or it will get worse.”
2verbscrapeTo make a thin mark on a surface with something sharp.B1~60%
“Somebody scratched the paint on the car door.”
synonyms: scrape, score, graze
3nounleftA thin mark left on a surface by something sharp.B1~2%
“There is a deep scratch across the screen.”
4nounsmallA small shallow cut on the skin.B1~24%
“He climbed out of the car with nothing worse than a scratch on his arm.”
5verbtakeTo take a name off a list, or pull a competitor out of a race.C1~2%
“Two runners were scratched from the final.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 8 of them on a sense (5 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

from scratch — from the very beginning, with nothing prepared in advance
up to scratch — good enough, at the standard required
scratch the surface — to deal with only a small part of something big

Also practised as

verbTo make a shallow mark with something sharp.

Where it comes from

Nobody is certain where scratch came from. Middle English had two words doing the job, scratten and cracchen, and scratch looks like what happens when they collide and fuse. It is a rare case of English keeping the mongrel and losing both parents.

Middle English
scracchen
English, today
scratch

Built from

cracchen · Middle English — to scratch

From Middle English scracchen, of unknown origin. Potentially a blend of Middle English scratten (“to scratch”) and cracchen (“to scratch”). More at scrat and cratch. Compare scrama, skråma, Schramme, which may be related.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Body & Health, Everyday Verbs, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 1 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

scratch in the wild

In hip hop culture, scratching is one of the measures of a DJ's skills.
Scratching
DJs compete in scratching competitions at the DMC World DJ Championships and IDA (International DJ Association), formerly known as ITF (International Turntablist Federation).
Scratching
In these cases, the card becomes invalid if too many areas are scratched.
Scratchcard
After losing, one can scratch all areas to see if, how, and what one could have won with this card.
Scratchcard
The disease can be passed to a human from dog scratches or bites, but this is relatively rare.
Cat-scratch disease

1 / 3

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the cracchen family

scratch

scratch — used about once every 175 pages · #1,587 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of scratch

1verbscratchTo rub your nails over your skin because it itches.B1~12%

“Try not to scratch the bite or it will get worse.”

2verbscrapeTo make a thin mark on a surface with something sharp.B1~60%

“Somebody scratched the paint on the car door.”

synonyms: scrape, score, graze

3nounleftA thin mark left on a surface by something sharp.B1~2%

“There is a deep scratch across the screen.”

4nounsmallA small shallow cut on the skin.B1~24%

“He climbed out of the car with nothing worse than a scratch on his arm.”

5verbtakeTo take a name off a list, or pull a competitor out of a race.C1~2%

“Two runners were scratched from the final.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 8 of them on a sense (5 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.