scroll

UK/skɹəʊl/US/skɹoʊl/

verbB1+3 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,560 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: scrolls, scrolling, scrolled

To scroll is to slide a page up or down — thumb on the screen, wheel under your finger. Scrolling through photos, scrolling to the bottom of a long thread, scrolling past the same advert three times.

The other meaning came first: a scroll is a long sheet of parchment rolled at both ends, the way books were made before pages — the Dead Sea Scrolls, a scroll tied with ribbon and handed over at a ceremony. That is the picture behind the screen, the text unrolling as you go. It takes THROUGH and DOWN: scroll through your feed, scroll down to the comments. Doomscrolling is the name for the miserable version at one in the morning. A scroll is also the carved spiral at the top of a violin's neck, and any ornament that curls that way.

Definitions of scroll

1verbscrollTo move text or images up, down or across a screen.B1+~14%
“Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the total.”
2nounrollA roll of paper or parchment used for writing.B2~73%
“The museum keeps the scroll in a glass case.”
3nouncurvedA curved, spiral ornament or shape.C1~13%
“The back of the chair was carved with scrolls.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: swipe

Also practised as

nounA rolled document, often ancient and powerful.

Where it comes from

A scroll was a strip cut from parchment. English took it from Old French escroe, 'a scroll, a strip of parchment', from Frankish skraudu, 'a shred', from a root meaning to cut — which makes scroll a cousin of shred and of escrow. The l came from rolle, 'roll', which the word rubbed up against in Middle English.

Proto-Germanic
*skraudō
Frankish
*skraudu — a shred
Old French
escroe
Middle English
scrowle
English, today
scroll

Built from

escrouwe · Old French — scroll, strip of parchment
*skrew- · Proto-Indo-European — to cut; cutting tool
*(s)ker- · Proto-Indo-European — to cut

From Middle English scrowle, scrolle, from earlier scrowe, scrouwe (influenced by Middle English rolle), from Old French escroe, escrowe, escrouwe (“scroll, strip of parchment”), from Frankish skraudu (“a shred”), from Proto-Germanic skraudō, from skrew- (“to cut; cutting tool”), extension of (s)ker- (“to cut”). a doublet of shred and escrow.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Technology & Internet, History & Eras, Computing & Code

Practise this word

scroll in the wild

In the wider sense, the Dead Sea Scrolls also include similar findings from elsewhere in the Judaean Desert, and are sometimes called Judaean Desert scrolls.
Dead Sea Scrolls
Some of the scrolls found outside Qumran are from later centuries.
Dead Sea Scrolls
A common television and movie special effect is to scroll credits, while leaving the background stationary.
Scrolling
When frame rate is a limiting factor, one smooth scrolling technique is to blur images during movement that would otherwise appear to "jump".
Scrolling
A scroll saw is a small electric or pedal-operated saw used to cut intricate curves in wood, metal, or other materials.
Scroll saw

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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

scrolling

Definitions of scroll

1verbscrollTo move text or images up, down or across a screen.B1+~14%

“Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the total.”

2nounrollA roll of paper or parchment used for writing.B2~73%

“The museum keeps the scroll in a glass case.”

3nouncurvedA curved, spiral ornament or shape.C1~13%

“The back of the chair was carved with scrolls.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: swipe