/skɹʌb/, /skɹʊb/
OriginLate Middle English in the sense of "stunted tree," a variant of shrub, possibly under Old Norse influence.
- Mean; dirty; contemptible; scrubby.
“How solitary, how scrub, does this town look!”
“No little scrub joint shall come on my board.”
- uncountableA thicket or jungle, often specified by the name of the prevailing plant.
“oak scrub”
“I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the f”
- uncountableVegetation judged to be of inferior quality or of little use to humans, though sometimes thick and impenetrable, growing in poor soil or in sand; also, brush.
- US, countableOne of the common livestock of a region of no particular breed or not of pure breed, especially when inferior in size, etc.; particularly a male animal poorly suited for breeding.
- countable, slangOne not on the first team of players; a substitute.
- An instance of scrubbing.
- A cancellation.
“Unacceptable winds aloft caused four scrubs and one hold; adverse weather caused a scrub; […]”
- A worn-out brush.
“A scrub [broom worn out] Scopa detrita.”
- One who scrubs.
- That which scrubs.
- An exfoliant for the body.
- in-pluralClothing worn while performing surgery.
- broadly, in-pluralAny medical uniform consisting of a short-sleeved shirt and pants (trousers).
“A man dressed as a lab tech, his blue scrubs startlingly pale against the vivid red and black chaos, moved into sight from behind the SUV. He carried an assault rifle.”
- obsolete, slangInformal attire or dress code; morning dress
“The third, which was as homely as its name, and which she reserved for scouring the country and such like rough usage in quite private rural life, was her "Scrub."”
“For one of Lucia's quaint ideas was to divide dresses into three classes, "Hightum," "Tightum" and "Scrub."”
- transitiveTo rub hard; to wash with rubbing; usually, to rub with a wet brush, or with something coarse or rough, for the purpose of cleaning or brightening
“to scrub a floor”
“to scrub your fingernails”
- intransitiveTo rub anything hard, especially with a wet brush; to scour
- figuratively, intransitiveTo be diligent and penurious
“to scrub hard for a living”
- transitiveTo call off a scheduled event; to cancel.
“Engineers had to scrub the satellite launch due to bad weather.”
- transitiveTo eliminate or to correct data from a set of records to bring it inline with other similar datasets
“The street segment data from the National Post Office will need to be scrubbed before it can be integrated into our system.”
- To move a recording tape back and forth with a scrubbing motion to produce a scratching sound, or to do so by a similar use of a control on an editing system.
- To maneuver the play position on a media editing system by using a scroll bar or touch-based interface.
Formsmore scrub(comparative) · most scrub(superlative) · scrubs(plural) · scrubs(present, singular, third-person) · scrubbing(participle, present) · scrubbed(participle, past) · scrubbed(past)