Scrubbing

How to spell scrubbing

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce scrubbing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scrubbing mean?

1. verbCleaning something by rubbing it hard, usually with a brush, cloth, or abrasive.
2. verbInformally, cancelling or abandoning a plan or arrangement.

Scrubbing in a sentence

• She spent the afternoon scrubbing the kitchen tiles until they shone.

• The committee ended up scrubbing the whole proposal after the budget was cut.

• He was scrubbing the pan to remove the burnt residue.

• They were scrubbing the launch because the weather had turned dangerous.

Where does scrubbing come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The base word scrub means to rub something hard, usually to clean it, and it entered English in the late medieval period, around the 1400s. It was most likely borrowed from a continental Germanic source such as Middle Dutch schrobben or Middle Low German schrubben, both meaning to scrape or rub vigorously, and there may also have been reinforcement from a Scandinavian cousin. The original sense was thoroughly physical: to scour a surface by working a coarse brush or cloth back and forth. Over time the word broadened into figurative uses, such as scrubbing a plan (cancelling it) or scrubbing data (cleaning out errors), but the core idea of rubbing away dirt stayed central. The doubled b in scrubbing is the usual English pattern: a short stressed vowel followed by a single final consonant doubles that consonant before -ing, which is the small spelling point worth remembering here.

How the word is built

• scrub (to rub hard)
• -b- (doubled consonant)
• -ing (present participle/gerund)