SCRATCHING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Scratching

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/skrˈætʃɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Scratch v. t. (past & past part. scratched; pres. part. scratching)

To rub and tear or mark the surface of with something sharp or ragged; to scrape, roughen, or wound slightly by drawing something pointed or rough across, as the claws, the nails, a pin, or the like. "Small sand-colored stones, so hard as to scratch glass." "Be mindful, when invention fails, To scratch your head, and bite your nails."

To write or draw hastily or awkwardly. "Scratch out a pamphlet."

To cancel by drawing one or more lines through, as the name of a candidate upon a ballot, or of a horse in a list; hence, to erase; to efface; often with out.

To dig or excavate with the claws; as, some animals scratch holes, in which they burrow.

To scratch a ticket, to cancel one or more names of candidates on a party ballot; to refuse to vote the party ticket in its entirety. (U. S.)

Scratch v. i.

To use the claws or nails in tearing or in digging; to make scratches. "Dull, tame things,... that will neither bite nor scratch."

(Billiards) To score, not by skillful play but by some fortunate chance of the game. (Cant, U. S.)

adverb

Scratching adv. With the action of scratching.

See images of 'Scratching'

Etymology of 'Scratching'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Scratching" Quotes from Famous Books

... Francisco was totally destroyed by fire. The conflagration was caused by the friction of a pig scratching itself against an angle of a wooden building. More than one hundred thousand persons perished, and the loss of property is estimated by Kobo-Dogarque at one and a half million drusoes. On more than two-thirds ...

— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... snatched off the encircling linen, when out struggled—scratching, grinning, and screaming—what the doctor in his fright fully believed to be a demon, but what Tito recognised as Vaiano's monkey, made more formidable by an artificial blackness, such as might have come from a hasty rubbing up ...

— Romola • George Eliot

... voice continued its drowsy tale. The afternoon sun poured in at the window until it made the little wainscoted parlour like an oven, but still for me it only lit up one pair of eyes. The voices sounded more and more like those of a dream; the scratching of pens and shuffling of feet were, to my ears, as distant murmurs of the sea, until the coroner's ...

— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Monsieur Funck-Brentano does not tell the sequel of the story of Jeanne de la Motte, nee de Saint-Remy, and calling herself de Valois. He leaves this wicked woman at the moment when (June 21, 1786) she has been publicly flogged and branded, struggling, scratching, and biting like a wild cat. Her husband, at about the same time, was in Edinburgh, and had just escaped from being kidnapped by the French police. In another work Monsieur Funck-Brentano criticises, with ...

— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... the occasion of my visit to McPherson on the 30th of May, while standing with a group of officers, among whom were Generals McPherson, Logan, Barry, and Colonel Taylor, my former chief of artillery, a Minie-ball passed through Logan's coat-sleeve, scratching the skin, and struck Colonel Taylor square in the breast; luckily he had in his pocket a famous memorandum-book, in which he kept a sort of diary, about which we used to joke him a good deal; its thickness ...

— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

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