Definition of SCAB

scab

Meanings

Plural: scabs

Noun

  • someone who works (or provides workers) during a strike
  • the crustlike surface of a healing skin lesion
  • An incrustation over a sore, wound, vesicle, or pustule, formed during healing.
  • The scabies.
  • The mange, especially when it appears on sheep.
  • Any of several different diseases of potatoes producing pits and other damage on their surface, caused by streptomyces bacteria (but formerly believed to be caused by a fungus).
  • Common scab, a relatively harmless variety of scab (potato disease) caused by Streptomyces scabies.
  • Any one of various more or less destructive fungal diseases that attack cultivated plants, forming dark-colored crustlike spots.
  • A slight irregular protuberance which defaces the surface of a casting, caused by the breaking away of a part of the mold.
  • A mean, dirty, paltry fellow.
  • A worker who acts against trade union policies; any picket crosser (strikebreaker), and especially one with devotion to union busting.

Verb

  • form a scab
    • "the wounds will eventually scab"
  • take the place of work of someone on strike
  • To become covered by a scab or scabs.
  • To form into scabs and be shed, as damaged or diseased skin.
  • To remove part of a surface (from).
  • To act as a strikebreaker.
  • To beg (for), to cadge or bum.

Origin / Etymology

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”). 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.

Scrabble Score: 8

scab is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL word
scab is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
scab is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 10

scab is a valid Words With Friends word