• Scab

    Pronunciation

    • IPA: /skæb/
    • Rhymes: -æb

    Origin

    From Old English sceabb, Old Norse skabb, Latin scabies ("scab, itch, mange.") Cognate with Old English scafan, Latin scabere ("to scratch").

    Full definition of scab

    Noun

    scab

    (plural scabs)
    1. An incrustation over a sore, wound, vesicle, or pustule, formed during healing.
    2. (colloquial or obsolete) The scabies.
    3. The mange, especially when it appears on sheep.
      • 1882, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, Volume 4, p. 306,Scab was the terror of the sheep farmer, and the peril of his calling.
    4. 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).
    5. Common scab, a relatively harmless variety of scab (potato disease) caused by .
    6. (botany) Any one of various more or less destructive fungal diseases that attack cultivated plants, forming dark-colored crustlike spots.
    7. (founding) A slight irregular protuberance which defaces the surface of a casting, caused by the breaking away of a part of the mold.
    8. A mean, dirty, paltry fellow.
    9. (slang) A worker who acts against trade union policies, especially a strikebreaker.

    Synonyms

    Related terms

    Verb

    1. (intransitive) To become covered by a scab or scabs.
    2. (intransitive) To form into scabs and be shed, as damaged or diseased skin.
    3. (transitive) To remove part of a surface (from).
    4. (intransitive) To act as a strikebreaker.
    5. (transitive, UK, Australia, NZ, informal) To beg (for), to cadge or bum.I scabbed some money off a friend.

    Anagrams

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