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noun
Scrub  n.  
1.
One who labors hard and lives meanly; a mean fellow. "A sorry scrub." "We should go there in as proper a manner as possible; nor altogether like the scrubs about us."
2.
Something small and mean.
3.
A worn-out brush.
4.
A thicket or jungle, often specified by the name of the prevailing plant; as, oak scrub, palmetto scrub, etc.
5.
(Stock Breeding) One of the common live stock of a region of no particular breed or not of pure breed, esp. when inferior in size, etc. (U.S.)
6.
Vegetation of inferior quality, though sometimes thick and impenetrable, growing in poor soil or in sand; also, brush; called also scrub brush. See Brush, above. (Australia & South Africa)
7.
(Forestry) A low, straggling tree of inferior quality.
Scrub bird (Zool.), an Australian passerine bird of the family Atrichornithidae, as Atrichia clamosa; called also brush bird.
Scrub oak (Bot.), the popular name of several dwarfish species of oak. The scrub oak of New England and the Middle States is Quercus ilicifolia, a scraggy shrub; that of the Southern States is a small tree (Quercus Catesbaei); that of the Rocky Mountain region is Quercus undulata, var. Gambelii.
Scrub robin (Zool.), an Australian singing bird of the genus Drymodes.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scrub" Quotes from Famous Books



... voice was curiously pitying. "No one to make you feel like the gods. No one to serve you. No one to even scrub your back." ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... "I'm going to scrub the stable," said Vrouw Vedder. "It is getting too cold for the cows to stay all night in the pastures. Father means to bring Mevrouw Holstein in to-night, and I want her stable to be nice and clean ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... joining Moe and his little crew of thieves. Jimmy would have enjoyed helping in the stripping yard, but he had not the heft for it. They gave him little messy jobs to do that grimed his hands and made Jake's stern rule of cleanliness hard to achieve. Jimmy found it easier to avoid such jobs than to scrub his skin raw. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... a fertile scene it is indeed, and thoroughly typical of the peculiar charm of Southern Italy, wherein the rich well-tilled lands appear in striking contrast with the near-lying stony fallows and scrub-covered wastes. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... he had purchased a change of very cheap underwear, a towel, and a cake of soap. Every morning about daylight he went to a secluded spot on the levee, for a scrub and a swim. Then he washed out his towel and placed it with his other small belongings, in a storage place he had discovered ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... be a pine on the top of the hill Be a scrub in the valley—but be The best little scrub by the side of the rill; Be a bush if ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... convenience, means of communication, comfort, appliance of civilization has been wiped out or stopped; where there is little to eat and no way of getting food save from the country beyond the waters; where millionaire and pauper, Orville Wright and humble scrub-woman, stand shoulder to shoulder in the bread-line that winds towards the relief stations, all alike dependent for once on charity for the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... their tour of the trenches. Headquarters were situated in Gully Ravine, that prince among ravines on the Peninsula. From my place I could see the gully floor, which was the dry bed of a water-course, winding away between high walls of perpendicular cliffs or steep, scrub-covered slopes, as it pursued its journey, like some colossal trench, towards the firing line. Down the great cleft, while I looked, a horseman came riding rapidly. He was an officer, with a slight open wound in his chin, and he rode up to our ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... for an hour, upheld by the stimulus of light and morning air, when the cluster of scrub oaks, which was her destination, opened enough to show two rambling sheds, before one of which was a wooden platform containing a few barrels and bones. As she approached nearer, she could see that one or two horses were tethered under the trees, that ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... to work for lub, and it 'pears I can feel my ole jints limber up at de tought. It 'pears like dat lub is de only ting dat can make one young agin. Neber you fear, Miss Edie, we'll pull trough, and I'se see you a grand lady yet. A true lady you'se allers be, even if you went out to scrub." ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the flavor of cold water. Good by; and, whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep a constant supply, at the old stand. Who next? O, my little friend, you are let loose from school, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other school-boy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump. Take it, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may your ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Windsor Forest, Edward the Saint's old hunting-ground; its bottoms choked with beech and oak, and birch and alder scrub; its upper lands vast flats of level heath; along the great trackway which runs along the lower side of Chobham Camp, some quarter of a mile broad, every rut and trackway as fresh at this day as when the ancient Briton, finding that his neighbor's essedum—chariot, or rather cart—had worn the ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... Colonists call their forest "bush." What in England might be called bush or brushwood is called "scrub" in the Colonies. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... it if yer want ter go. Why don't yer try it Ole? You are so keen about getting away, you ought not to mind a little water. So ye prefer to stay along with the rest of us. All right then, my hearties, let's hunt up something to work with and scrub this deck. That's the ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... referring to those victories which crowd the daily placards of any newspapers. I am speaking of victory in the sense of a brilliant and formidable fact shaping the destinies of nations and shortening the duration of the war. Beyond those few miles of ridge and scrub on which our soldiers, our French comrades, our gallant Australian and New Zealand fellow-subjects are now battling, lie the downfall of a hostile empire, the destruction of an enemy's fleet and army, the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... that she was setting it sloppily down on the cloth. He could remember her noisy drinking, the weight of her elbow on the table, the creaking of her calico dress under the pressure of superabundant flesh. Besides, she had tried to scrub his favorite violin with sapolio. No, anything was better than Mrs. Buck as ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... literally buckled to with anchor-cable drag-ropes—a hundred pair of straining men for each great, lumbering gun. Over the sand they went at a romp. Over the rocks they had to take care; and in the dense, obstructing scrub they had to haul through by main force. But this was child's play to what awaited them in the slimy, shifting, and boulder-strewn bog they had to pass before reaching the ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... costly defeat, for they had lost over a hundred men, the Matabele, who were afraid to return to Buluwayo except as victors, did nothing of the sort. They only cut down a quantity of reeds and scrub, and moved their camp nearly to the banks of the river, placing it in such a position that it could no longer be searched by the fire of the two white men. Here they sat themselves down sullenly, hoping to starve out the garrison or to find ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... wish you-all'd eat that brekfus an' vamoose outen my way. Ah hes t' scrub this hull floor soon ez ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... woman. Gertrude and I never could think why she married Uncle Andrew, but I believe they got on all right, though she was a big handsome woman—a Clowes all over—while old Andrew looked like any little scrub out of Houndsditch. Never can tell why people marry each other, can you?" Bernard was becoming philosophical. I suppose if you go to the bottom it's Nature that takes them by the scruff of the neck and gives them a gentle shove and says 'More babies, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... to take heart o' grace and begin again," declared Mother Brace, coming in with her broom over her shoulder in time to hear the last words. "I suppose, then, you're willing to come and scrub my barn floors for me to-morrow morning. They won't be very hard, but I can't get down so long on account of my knee. I can ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various

... usually hilly, the scrub thick, and the grass high. It is needless to say that on the present occasion we were all on foot. Forestier's Peninsula is no place for a horse, except the traveller be jogging along the rugged and little ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... then will I wash the dishes. I, Joseppi, who never washed a dish in his life. Should he say, 'Cook the meals, Joseppi,' then will Joseppi, who never cooked a thing in his life, then will Joseppi cook the meals. Should he say, 'Joseppi, scrub the floor,' then will I scrub the floor. Should he say, 'Signor, steer the ship,' then will I do my best to steer the ship. I who have never steered a ship. So let me be ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... interrupted by flares sent up from the trenches somewhere in front. To our inexperienced eyes it seemed that the lights were very near us, for they showed up vividly the whole ground over which we were moving, every little clump of scrub standing out sharp and distinct as in the glare of a powerful searchlight. From repeated study of Notes on Trench Warfare in France, we had become permeated with the theory that where one's presence is revealed by a flare, ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... to occupy the abandoned position and again fortify the hill. In some respects this hill, which was about one hundred and fifty feet in height, made a strong and easily defended position; but, unfortunately, it was covered nearly to the summit with a dense growth of bushes and scrub, and was commanded by a range of higher hills a little farther to the eastward. The enemy, therefore, could not only creep close up to the camp under cover of the dense chaparral, but could fire down upon it from the higher slopes of the wooded range which runs parallel with the ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... as I live. I ain't had much to do with women, but I've seen 'em and I've watched 'em an' she's never goin' to drudge like the rest. If she'll let me, I'm even goin' to do the cookin' an' the dish-washing and scrub the floors! I've done it for twenty-five years, an' I'm tough. She ain't goin' to do nothin' but sew for the kids when they come, an' sing, an' be happy. When it comes to the work that there ain't no fun in, I'll do it. I've planned it all out. We're goin' to have half an arpent square of ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... "From riding your scrub railroad horses. I feel like a sailor ashore when I get off one. Are you going to eat all the bacon, Mr. McCloud, or do we draw a portion of it? I didn't start ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... beasts, would be most productive, and the outer coat is an expanse of tall, waving, sunburnt grass, so unbroken, that from a distance it resembles the nap of yellow velvet. In the frequent Wadys, which carry off the surplus rain of the hills, scrub and thorn trees grow in dense thickets, and the grass is temptingly green. Yet the land lies fallow: water and fuel are scarce at a distance from the hills, and the wildest Bedouins dare not front ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... in this house," flashed the girl. "There's been three here and that's enough! If he brings anybody home, I'll take Patience and run away, as Job did; or if he leaves me alone, I'll wash and iron and scrub and cook till Patience grows up, and then we'll go off together and hide somewhere. I'm fourteen; oh, mother, how soon could I be married and take Patience to live with me? Do you think ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... in the situation of Scrub. "Could they be laughing at me? Was I again the victim of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... rinsed with foaming soap-suds. Then each was given a clean shirt; and away to bed with them! They jumped and, with their shirt-tails waving behind them, skipped about and smacked one another until father came along and stopped their game. Mother had still her floor to scrub; and Horieneke read out evening prayers while the boys knelt beside ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... that a film left untouched would always come out as a black patch against work that was pierced with the scrub, however slightly. ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... coaxing them to grow. Bucket after bucket of water she tugged from the well to pour on their thirsty roots, and load after load of fertilizer she dragged in Allee's little cart to spread over the ground in her eager desire to increase their size. But when Gail found her with soap and scrub-brush polishing off each precious ball, she was forced to curb her zealous gardening. However, the vines throve through all this heroic treatment, and it seemed to Peace that she could almost see the fruit grow in circumference. Each night she ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... other woman kin do," she said, straightening herself up. "I kin bake, cook, wash, iron, scrub—" ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... the Broadway Central, but not for long. He was in no shape or mood to do the scrub work that exists about the foundation of every hotel. Nothing better offering, he was set to aid the fireman, to work about the basement, to do anything and everything that might offer. Porters, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... was unhealthy; and the coach, being pretty near as liable to hold-ups, wasn't much healthier. It had to go slow, the coach had—that was a powerful mean road after you left Pojuaque and got in among the sandhills—and you never was sure when some of them bunches of scrub-cedar wasn't going to wake up and take to pumping lead into you. Only a nervy man, like Hill was, ever could have took the contract; and Hill said he got so rattled sometimes—when it happened he hadn't no passengers and was going it alone in among them sandhills—he guessed ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier

... Bremerton was to do the housekeeping, and to play tutor and chaperon to her. Pamela resented both. If she was not to be allowed to scrub in a hospital, she might at least have learnt some housekeeping at home, for future use. As for the Greek lessons, it was not easy for her to be positively rude to any one, but she promised herself a good ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... his very self, To Rafael... I have known it all these years... (When the young man was flaming out his thoughts Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see, Too lifted up in heart because of it) "Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, 190 Who, were he set to plan and execute As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!" To Rafael's!—And indeed the arm is wrong. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... these things "Scotty" Allan was a past master. Yet in spite of his efforts and skill, they came in not first, but second; which was, according to George and Dan, "not so worse for a scrub team," and according to Ben, "mighty good ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... together, was a ridgy, spongy expanse of country, bordered on one side by the swollen river, here flowing again through steeper banks which were overgrown with alders and pollard willows. Along the left of the Spanish army, as they moved in the direction of Herenthals, was a continuous fringe of scrub-oaks, intermixed with tall beeches, skirting the heath, and forming a leafless but almost impervious screen for the movements of small detachments of troops. Quite at the termination of the open ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... you could, and I'm glad you've got the pluck to say so. I knew that from the first. You're a lot too clever for spinning, really. You'd shine anywhere. Let's sit here under this thorn bush. I must get some rabbiting over this scrub. The place swarms with them. You don't mind if ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... Lady of the Red Mountain. Then I allowed my feet to take the road downstream, and I travelled on to Anebuheq, the fortress that had been built to drive back the Satiu (nomad marauders), and to hold in check the tribes that roamed the desert. I crouched down in the scrub during the day to avoid being seen by the watchmen on the top of the fortress. I set out again on the march, when the night fell, and when daylight fell on the earth I arrived at Peten, and I rested myself by the ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... long, too short the days to wait, To plan and think and dread; And happy we whose poor estate Claims our work for our bread. Each day I went to scour and scrub As my mother us'd, Or stood before the washing-tub Where the ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett

... the mould. The hedgehogs, curled in their beds amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One evening, as the moon shone over the hill, the woodcock, that for months had dwelt by day in the oak-scrub near the "set," and had fed at night in the swampy thickets by the rill, heard the voice of a curlew descending from the heights of the sky, and rose, on quick, glad pinions, far beyond the soaring of the lark, to join a great bird-army travelling north. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... in his soul.—"It is the bitter task of experience to undeceive youth from its romantic dreams. As a rule, Abel, men are rascals; that is to say, they pursue their own interests. How sad! True; how sad! Where was I? Oh! men are scamps—with some exceptions; but you must go by the rule. Life is a scrub-race—melancholy, Abel, but true. I talk plainly to you, but I do it for your good. If we were all angels, things would be different. If this were the Millennium, every thing would doubtless be agreeable to every body. But it is not—how ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... was scrub forest in 1837, are a little street, a house of some pretension occupied by Mr. Laughton, the enterprising owner of the Beaver steamboat, plying on Lake ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... children would have dreamed of confluent smallpox for weeks to come. But we did none of these things in the Philippines. We merely requested the authorities to remove the smallpox patient, and ordered the janitor to scrub the room with soap and water. Nobody quitted school; nobody got the smallpox; and the whole thing was only ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... about five miles to the beach along a straight road bordered with palm trees. At some distance from the highway the country was thick with scrub, from which the sickly smell of the mangroves rose in the still slanting rays ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... toil and scrub early and late, with a husband and five children to do for, and to keep the place pretty much as you see it now, though I don't say as it ain't a little extry perhaps, in honour of your coming back—if that ain't hard work and cleanliness, and don't deserve a prize of two pound at the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... dragged me off the pony—for my hands and feet were numb with cold—took the bridle, and went off at a rapid stride, so that I had to run to keep them in sight in the darkness, for we were off the road in a thicket of scrub, looking like white branch-coral, I knew not where. Then we came suddenly on his cabin ... and the 'ruffian' insisted on my going in, and he made a good fire, and heated some coffee, raging all the ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... the banker. "No farmer should waste feed on horses that weigh less than 1600 pounds—from that on up to 2000 pounds is the coming horse in this country. Look what a difference there is in their capacity for work and a large horse really eats little more than a small scrub." ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... of his heart and he made excursions constantly to see that they were kept in order. They were simple enough, wide tracks, grass covered, cut through the scrub or through the plantations; but trees had to be rooted out, rocks dug up or blasted, and here and there levelling had been necessary. He was proud that he had surmounted by his own skill such difficulties as they presented. He rejoiced in his disposition of them so ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... that little washtub in my room no more, bekase you ain't a-goin' to toll me into it. I takes my bath when I gits home to Sally. She kinder expects it of me. Hit's a wife's privilege to cut her man's hair and pare his nails and scrub his ears an' all them little things, 'specially ef she ain't got no chillun to do hit fur, an' I'd feel mighty mean ef I disapp'inted her. I don't do much fer Sally, noways. No, darter, oncet or twicet a year's often enough fer a human critter to git wet all over, 'cep'n in a nateral ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... steep hillside. Presently Hazel could look away over an area of woodland undulating like a heavy ground swell at sea. Here and there ridges stood forth boldly above the general roll, and distantly she could descry a white-capped mountain range. They turned the end of a thick patch of pine scrub, and Bill pulled up in a small opening. From a case swinging at his belt he took out a pair of field glasses, and leisurely ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... stretches far northward from the Orange River between German SW. Africa and the Transvaal, an elevated plateau, not really desert, but covered with scrub and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... never shall I forget that day's journey. The beauty of the country exceeds all description. Ranges of mountains beyond belief fantastic in shape, and between them a rolling country, desolate and wild, and covered with gorgeous flowers among the 'scrub'. First we came to Hottentot's Holland (now called Somerset West), the loveliest little old Dutch village, with trees and little canals of bright clear mountain water, and groves of orange and pomegranate, and white houses, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon

... Parsonage key to unlock the door, and after filling her bucket at the pump in the yard, she put on the apron, tucked up her sleeves, and set to work. And it was work! Gwen had never in her life before tried to scrub a floor, and though her arms were sturdy and strong at wielding a tennis-racket or the lawn mower, they soon began to ache at the unwonted exercise which she had set herself. The room seemed most enormously large, ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... be sent into the town. The impatient Ney was waiting only for this command, he advanced toward the town gate escorted by a small body of Hussars, but suddenly a regiment of Cossacks, hidden by a fold in the ground covered by scrub, fell on our riders, drew them off and surrounded Marshal Ney, who was so hard pressed that a pistol shot fired at point blank range tore the collar of his coat. Fortunately the Domanget brigade hurried to the spot and freed the Marshal. The arrival of General ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... the merry merry Christchurch bells! She's up by this time;— that don't sound like a drag now!" cries Tom, bursting desperately, with elbow-guarded visage, through the tangled scrub. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... another place. But Mrs. Latch had the power to thwart her in this. Before beginning on her jellies and gravies Mrs. Latch was sure to find some saucepans that had not been sufficiently cleaned with white sand, and, if her search proved abortive, she would send Esther upstairs to scrub out her bedroom. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... to pay us?" persisted a Sydney man. "An' arter we've beat off this other gang, are we going to scrub along on grub wages until we're yanked out by process-sarvers three months later? If that's the ticket I'm not in it. I aren't ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... of brook that is, for every one knows the kind of country arbutus loves—hilly country, with slopes toward the north; bits of woodland, preferably with pine in it, to give shade, but not too deep shade; a scrub undergrowth of laurel and huckleberry and bay; and always, somewhere within sight or hearing, water. It is curious how arbutus, which never grows in wet places, yet seems to like the neighborhood of water. It loves the slopes above ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... hour later, the travelers were on the road. Beyond the grove of mimosas was a stretch of sparsely timbered country, which quite deserved its name of "open plain." Some fragments of quartz and ferruginous rock lay among the scrub and the tall grass, where numerous flocks were feeding. Some miles farther the wheels of the wagon plowed deep into the alluvial soil, where irregular creeks murmured in their beds, half hidden among giant reeds. By-and-by they skirted vast salt lakes, rapidly evaporating. The journey ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... speeches, as a rule, elicited appreciative cheers, but this afternoon there was only a grave silence. After dismissal, the men went to their huts and were soon busy giving themselves a "high mark scrub" preliminary to the hot bath and "jungle hunt" in which they ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... declared loudly, her needle flying in and out in time to her words, "I would rather get down on my marrow bones and scrub for my living if I was the Grant Girls than keep a young man at home. Gavin Grant's duty ain't at home any more than Trooper's is. The Grant Girls'll never want. Hughie Reid is just a brother to ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... greatest of the thickets, with here and there a jutting spur of it projecting toward him along a gully. Nelsen's hide tingled. But his first glimpse was handicapped by distance. He saw only an expanse of low shagginess that might have been scrub growths of ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... at the spot a little critically. Scrub palmettoes and grass overhung the bank above, which made him wonder if there was any danger of their catching fire. A little breeze was springing up, but he decided that it was not strong enough to carry the ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... woman capable of knowing how, and willing to take a place in the home affairs of life. It is an ambition of mine to establish a Preparatory College in Topeka, Kansas, where girls may be taught, as women should be, that they in turn may teach others, how to wash, cook, scrub, dress and talk, to counteract the idea that woman is a toy, pretty doll, with no will power of her own, only a parrot, a parasite of a man. To be womanly, means strength of character, virtue and a power for ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... adjourned to Nettlebank, where he no doubt counselled more; but through this labyrinth we shall not follow him. Only Andrew Sharp, who again brought out his horse, heard him say, as he was about to depart, "Well, I think I have the old scrub for the new barn, and, in the meantime, Mr. Gilbert, who is really a smart lad, must try ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... ugly!' shrieked the Dowager. 'Tear her wig off! Scrub the paint off her face! Flatten her nose on the pavement! Saw off her legs and give her no crinoline! Take her out bathing, I say, and bring her home in a wheelbarrow with fern roots on the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... a farmyard is half hidden behind the yellowing elms; a boy is driving a flock of white geese along the twisting road; the hedges are red with the withering briers. Up here, along the hillsides, the woods of scrub-oak are glowing with every imaginable hue of gold, crimson and bronze, except where a few dark firs appear, or where a tuft of broom, pure and bright in its green, stands out among the faded brackens. The gorse is profusely in bloom: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... and suffered the more severely, as I was told afterwards, because I had had no food for upwards of fifteen hours. For a whole day I lay in helpless misery: but then Captain Cawson (so he was named) himself came to me, hauled me to my feet, and with an oath bade me go and scrub the floor of the cook's galley. At the time I thought him a monster of brutality, driving me to my death; but I soon learned that nothing prolongs sea sickness, or indeed any sickness, so much as brooding on it, and the activity thus forced upon me ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... left hand corner, which conveyed to the enlightened recipient what sort of party it was to be, and denoted the standard of dress. For one of Lucia's quaint ideas was to divide dresses into three classes, "Hightum," "Tightum" and "Scrub." "Hightum" was your very best dress, the smartest and newest of all, and when "Hightum" was written on a card of invitation, it implied that the party was a very resplendent one. "Tightum" similarly indicated ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... are all the other handsome chambers on this story. The men were obliging and tried to find scrub-women, but the poor things are afraid of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... again the slave of an ivory-poaching, hide-poaching, specimen-poaching, slave-dealing gang of Arabs, Negroes, and Portuguese half-castes, led by a white man of the Teutonic persuasion. He could feel the smiting heat, see the scrub, jungle, and sand shimmering and dancing in the heat haze. He could see the line of porters, bales on heads, the Arabs on horseback, the white man in a litter swinging from a long bamboo pole beneath which half a dozen Swahili loped along. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... tub of boilin' water! And den dey got around, And some scrubbin'-brushes found, And said dey'd wash me whiter dan paper. Oh! dey got me in a tub, And dey all began to rub: I tell you it was a pretty sight! For, some put on de soap. And de oders dey did scrub, But dey found dey couldn't wash de ...
— Slavery's Passed Away and Other Songs • Various

... cleaning process, for example, and watch what is happening. Dr. Helen Sumner draws attention to the fact that we ourselves are witnessing its rapid transformation. It is being taken out of the hands of the individual houseworker, who is wont to scrub, sweep and dust in the intervals between marketing, cooking, laundry-work or sewing, and by whom it is performed well or ill, but always according to the standards of the individual household, which means that there are ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... in a rough outer casing of twigs, placed on a horizontal bough overhanging a nullah about fifteen feet from the ground. The tree had moderately dense foliage, and was about twenty-five feet high in a small clump on a hillside covered with low scrub at 5000 feet elevation above the sea. Around the nest several small boughs and twigs grew out, and being very slight in structure it was not easy to see. The old bird sat very close. There were six eggs in the nest about half-incubated: in two of them the markings were densest at the small end. ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... the silence of the bush that the silken rustle of the butterflies becomes audible and the distinctive flight of birds is recognised—not alone such exaggerated differences as the whirr of quail, the bustle of scrub fowl, and the whistle and clacking of nutmeg pigeons, but the delicate and tender characteristics of the wing notes of the meeker kinds of doves and the honey-eaters, and also the calculated flutterings of the fly-catchers. In the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... reason cats don't like water?" Minnie asked her mother. "Leo thinks a bath very refreshing, and I suppose Tiney would if Kate did not scrub her ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie

... modern popular idea,—you dress more elegantly, cultivate more fashionable society, leave your thinking for your husband and your minister to do for you, and become in the economy of life but a sentient nonentity. If you are true to the grand passion, and accept with it poverty, you bake, brew, scrub, spank the children, and talk with your neighbor over the back fence for recreation, spending the years literally like the horse in a treadmill, all for the lack of a purpose,—a purpose sufficiently potent to convert the latent talent into a gem of living ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... work in the janitor's quarters of the office building. She was given her pail, her scrub brush, mop and bar of soap and with eight other women who looked curiously like herself started to work in the corridors. The feet of the lawyers, stenographers and financiers had left stains. Crawling inch by inch down the tiled ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... hah! Always I scrub me any'ow till I come to the skin. Also I'll put a clean shirt. You can wait? I'll leave you ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... school-master was sitting behind his great book-laden desk, Close-watching the motions of scholars, pathetic and gay and grotesque. As whisper the half-leafless branches, when autumn's brisk breezes have come, His little scrub-thicket of pupils sent upward a half-smothered hum. There was little Tom Timms on the front seat, whose face was withstanding a drouth. And jolly Jack Gibbs just behind him, with a rainy new moon for a mouth; There were both of the Smith boys, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... railway, he crosses a river by some bridge of boats or local ferry, he will find still wider expanses of sand sometimes bare and dry and white, at others moist and dark and covered with dwarf tamarisk. He may notice that, before he reaches the sand and the tamarisk scrub, he leaves by a gentle or abrupt descent the dry uplands, and passes into a lower, greener, and perhaps to his inexperienced eye more fertile seeming tract. This is the valley, often miles broad, through which the stream has moved in ever-shifting channels in the course of centuries. ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... as at last he laid down both pieces of the paper. "These French specifications and figures that floored you, represent the ideal mule in bulk and these United States figures promise the same multitude in scrub. I thought as much. You just run in there to Bill with them and then forget you ever saw them, and we'll be on our way to the girls in ten minutes. Bobby, I mean it when I say that men in your and my positions of trust just forget facts and figures the minute we ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... these cabins to the poor-white element, so numerous on the Ohio's banks. The renter is privileged to cultivate whatever land he can clear on the rocky, precipitous slopes, which is seldom more than half an acre to the cabin; and he may, if he can afford a cow, let her run wild in the scrub. The coal vein, a few rods back of the house, is only a few inches thick, and poor in quality, but is freely resorted to by the cotters. He worked whenever he could find a job, my host said—in the coal mines and quarries, or on the bottom ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... struggled somehow through five years of life, and was put into smallclothes. Two weeks after this promotion his mother started off to scrub out a big house in the fashionable quarter, and took him with her: for the house possessed a wide garden, laid with turf and lined with espaliers, sunflowers, and hollyhocks, and as the month was August, and the family away in Scotland, there seemed no harm in letting ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... wet and sanded all over, and then holystoned. The holystone is a large, soft stone, smooth on the bottom, with long ropes attached to each end, by which the crew keep it sliding fore and aft over the wet sanded decks. Smaller hand-stones, which the sailors call "prayer-books,'' are used to scrub in among the crevices and narrow places, where the large holystone will not go. An hour or two we were kept at this work, when the head-pump was manned, and all the sand washed off the decks and sides. Then came swabs and squilgees; and, after the decks were dry, each one went to his particular ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... These are the celebrated "portages" of Canadian history, from the French word porter, to carry, transport. Sometimes the portages were made still easier for loaded canoes by a road being cleared through the scrub and over the rocks, and wooden rollers placed across it. Strong men could then easily haul a loaded canoe over these wooden rollers until it could be launched again in the water. Often these portages were made to circumvent dangerous rapids or waterfalls. ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... tuk off an' dey wuz rubbed slick an' shiny. De sprangs wuz rope crossed frum one side uv de bed to de udder. De mattress wuz straw or cotton in big sacks made outen osnaberg or big salt sacks pieced tergether. Mammy didn't have much soap an' she uster scrub de flo' wid sand an' it wuz jes ez white. Yas mam, she made all de soap us used, but it tuk a heap. We'uns cooked in de ashes an' on hot coals, but de vittals tasted a heap better'n dey does nowadays. Mammy had to wuk in de fiel' an' den cum home an' cook ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... into the tent, Miss Carolan, but we wanted to light and leave the lantern with you. I'm afraid the horses have bolted for shelter into the sandalwood scrub lower down the creek, or into the gullies, and Jacky has gone after them. Will you mind staying here alone for an hour or two whilst Scott and I ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke

... and the immense black pupils of his eyes, the man shows a countenance irradiated by a steadfast soul, which will not give in till the last moment. He contemplates the ravages of his body almost severely, and without illusion, and watching the surgeons as they scrub their hands, he ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... back away a few yards, I tied his halter to a scrub tree and then advanced toward the bear with my rifle in my left hand. He didn't budge, and when I yelled at him he only started a little and cocked his head over on the other side. That made me laugh, and then I amused myself by talking to him. 'Why don't you move?' said I. 'I know you got here ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... water with soda in it, and scrub them quite clean with a sieve-brush. Dry them thoroughly, and keep them in a dry place. If this is not done a hair sieve will get mildewed, an iron one rusty, and a copper one will verdigris and ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison

... Tom shortly, "just as you like. If you feel yourself going, stoop down and pretend to fasten your shoe, and give a scrub to your cheeks before passing Miss Bruce. She'll spot you in a moment if you go in with a face ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry to listen to explanations; she hauled me to the washstand, inflicted a merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with soap, water, and a coarse towel; disciplined my head with a bristly brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me to the top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... course many hard and unpleasant things about her new life. There were so many things to learn, and she was so awkward at work of all kinds! Her hands seemed so small and inadequate when she tried to wring clothes or scrub a dirty step. Then, too, her young charge, Elise Hathaway, was spoiled and hard to please, and she was daily tried by the necessity of inventing ways of discipline for the poor little neglected girl which yet would not bring down a protest from her even more undisciplined mother. If ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... to get used to having a pony-chaise," Mr. Argenter said very quietly and shortly. "If she wants to 'show a kindness,' and take 'other' girls to ride, there's the slide-top buggy and old Scrub. She may have that as often as ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... brought us by a lake which gave a chilly air to the landscape in the winter day, then past a strip of country meagrely wooded. We turned into a narrow road that struck the hills at once, skirting a sloping place covered with scrub and quite dark, like a black patch on the landscape. After that it was a barren pasture, prolific only in bleached boulders of rocks, of bracken that lay wasted, of broom that was sere. It was a very ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... bands of greater or less width of tall grasses. The third day, between 30 and 40 miles from Myers, we left the pine tree lands and started across what are called in Southern Florida the "prairies." These are wide stretches covered with grass and with scrub palmetto and dotted at near intervals with what are called pine "islands" or "hammocks" and cypress swamps. The pine island or hammock is a slight elevation of the soil, rising a few inches above the dead level. The cypress swamp, on the contrary, seems to ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley

... up to the Table and began to distribute a few sample Smiles, so as to indicate the Character of her Work, the musical Team went out with the Tide, the Grass Widow curled up like an Autumn Leaf, the touch-me-not Married Lady dropped into the Scrub Division. The Lady who read was shy a Spoon and afraid to ask for it. The Men were all google-eyed, and the Help was running into Chairs and dropping important ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... leaving the railroad they had spent four days upon the trail, which sometimes ran plain before them, marked by dints of wheels among the wiry grass, and sometimes died away, leaving them at a loss in a wilderness of sand and short poplar scrub. ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... and a whole world to do at the Youngs'," declared Elsie, releasing herself with a final twirl. "Now, Clare dear, order Marigold and Summer-Savory, please, to be brought down in half an hour, and tell old Jose that we want him to help and scrub. No, young man, not another turn. These sports are unseemly on such a busy day as this. 'Dost thou not suspect my place? dost thou not suspect my years?' as the immortal W. would say. I am twenty-five,—nearly twenty-six,—and am not ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... occasion of Mary's crusade against the general disorder, sat up in the crib donated by Mrs. O'Malligan,—the last of the O'Malligans being now in trousers,—and hung over the side with every mark of approving interest. And happy with something to love and an object to work for, Mary continued to scrub on with a heart strangely light. "And I couldn't slight the corners if I wanted to," she told her neighbors, "with them great solemn ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... badly; something's wrong with his ankle, his leg; he can't walk; can't go on, even on my horse. It happened over there, about two miles." Here Billy pointed across the prairie to where a slight hump showed where the dead horse lay. "I got him over here," he continued, looking about at the scrub poplar and cottonwood trees, "where there was shelter and slough water, but he can't go on. Our father is Mr. MacIntyre, the Hudson's Bay Factor at ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... from one of the fielders and took his position in the pitcher's box. The uniform set off his powerful form; there was something surly and grimly determined in his face. He glanced about to his players, as if from long habit, and called out gruffly: "Get in the game, fellows! No runs for this scrub outfit!" Then, with long-practised swing, he delivered the ball. It travelled plateward swift as the flight of a white swallow. The umpire called it a strike on Weir; the same on the next pitch; the third was wide. Weir missed the fourth and was out. Raymond followed on the ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... afternoon, I found a haversack containing some hard-tack. This our mess divided. We did not fail to commiserate the unlucky chap whose loss was our gain. This was a very unsatisfactory fight. It always seemed to me like a scrub race. The rebels plunged in as if they thought it was a 2.20 affair, at the least. The march continued all night. About two in the morning I concluded that the thing had gone on about long enough, and, without any ceremony, made my ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... the landward rail, and, with or without glasses, endeavoured to discover battle-signs and the positions of our men. There were across the steep green hillsides several great scars, where the scrub was withered and the bare earth showed; but surely our main line was over that high ridge, for reports stated that the army corps had penetrated several miles. The artillery was awakening to its evening activity, field guns could be seen firing, and shells ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... contemptuous surnames, but their great people also. They didn't call you the matchless Hurler, because by doing so they would have paid you a compliment, but Hull over the head Jack, as much as to say that after all you were a scrub: so, in ancient time, instead of calling Regner the great conqueror, the Nation Tamer, they surnamed him Lodbrog, which signifies Rough or Hairy Breeks—lod or loddin signifying rough or hairy; and instead of complimenting Halgerdr, the wife of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... light a fire even at night, as it might have attracted the blacks; therefore they took it in turn to sleep and watch when the others rested; while the dingoes sneaked from their cover in the belts of scrub, ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... little gratifications of that evening are graven in my mind, undoubtedly, you will say, because of the startling climax for which they were preparing me. The clean tingling of my soapy scrub, the delicious coolness of the plunge, the leisurely, fresh dressing all caressed my nerves delightfully. In the plunge a pleasant enough fellow had accosted me and we had splashed together contentedly. I expected to recall ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... improvement towards picturesque beauty. Now and then, to be sure, they came to woods of birch or fir, but the trees were small and widely scattered; still the chief feature was a dead flat covered with scrub. ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... imperial and gorgeous purple, hung masses of bougonvillea between trellis and masonry. At a more lofty line, where the sub-tropical profusion halted in the warning breath of a keener atmosphere, came the scrub growth and beyond that, in succeeding altitudes, the pine belt, the snow line and the film of trailing cloud on ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... several flights of stairs, a hundred pounds at a time, in prodigious metal pitchers. She does not have to work more than eighteen or twenty hours a day, and she can always get down on her knees and scrub the floors of halls and closets when she is tired ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the hungriest cleared roads in New South Wales runs to within a couple of miles of Hungerford, and stops there; then you strike through the scrub to the town. There is no distant prospect of Hungerford—you don't see the town till you are quite close to it, and then two or three white-washed galvanized-iron roofs start out of ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... wilderness of hills and scrub forest, all lying under the deep snow, and without sign of ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... the grape region is an area peculiarly adapted for the cultivation of tobacco; and east of the tobacco district, north of the coastal belt of wheat in a region of sandy scrub, the bush country, are the ostrich farms, in the hands mainly of men of considerable capital, who supply nearly all the feathers derived from the domesticated ostrich. The plumes are sometimes worth as much as $200 a pound, the ordinary feathers bringing from $5 to $7 a pound. Natal is unique ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... and scrub and cook, and pretend they don't,—that is the difference," put in Miss Sarah, crossing her knees and bending forward with the air of one who had found a congenial theme. "I am a paper-hanger, a painter, and a maid-of-all-work; ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard

... second day I received a call from Mrs. Noonan, whom I had employed to scrub the house. She had in her hand a folded paper, which she ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... headland, through the deepening dusk the acetylene lamps on a cluster of motor cars spread a blinding light across the scrub. The windows of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers



Words linked to "Scrub" :   scrub beefwood, scrubber, scrub nurse, scouring, schedule, call off, holystone, bush, flora, cleaning, scrub oak, scrub up, unimproved, scrub palmetto, lave, scrub pine, wash, cleansing, scrub bird, chaparral, rub, scrubbing, scour, cancel, seaside scrub oak, mopping, scrub typhus



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