Scrape

How to spell scrape

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce scrape

What does scrape mean?

1. verbTo drag a hard or sharp edge across a surface, usually to remove something or causing damage.
2. nounA minor graze or mark caused by friction, or an awkward and difficult situation.

Scrape in a sentence

• verb

  She had to scrape the ice off the windscreen before driving.

• noun

  The fall left a nasty scrape on his knee.

• verb

  Try not to scrape the new table when you move the chairs.

• noun

  The teenager got into a financial scrape and asked his parents for help.

Where does scrape come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Scrape comes from a northern Germanic root meaning 'to scratch or grate', and English drew on two closely related sources: the Old English verb scrapian and, more strongly, the Old Norse skrapa, both meaning 'to scratch'. These were cousins within the Germanic family, and the Norse form left a heavy mark on the dialects of northern and eastern England, which is why the word feels so firmly rooted in everyday English. The literal sense was always physical, dragging a hard or sharp edge across a surface to remove something, and from there the meaning widened: by the 1500s 'scrape' could describe gathering money together painfully ('scrape together'), and by the 1700s a 'scrape' became a slang term for an awkward predicament, as if one had scratched oneself into trouble. The spelling trap is mild but real: the final silent 'e' is what stretches the vowel from the short sound of 'scrap' to the long sound of 'scrape', so the two words differ by a single letter that changes everything.

How the word is built

• scrap- (Germanic root meaning to scratch or grate)
• -e (silent vowel marking the long 'a')