scrouge

English

Alternative forms

• scrooge, scrowdge, scrudge

Etymology

Uncertain. Possibly related to shrug.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /skɹaʊd͡ʒ/

Verb

scrouge (third-person singular simple present scrouges, present participle scrouging, simple past and past participle scrouged)

1. (UK, dialect and US, colloquial, transitive) To crowd; to squeeze.
   • 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC:

     Well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and scrouging and pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look […]

   • 1983, Judson R. Landis, Sociology: concepts and characteristics:

     I look for veiled eyes or bodies scrouged into a seat in an alien world.

   • 2001, Aileen Kilgore Henderson, Stateside Soldier: Life in the Women's Army Corps, 1944-1945, page 12:

     We stayed up till eleven, sitting on the stairs, on the floor, and scrouged into the day room, surrounded by stacks of GI clothes.

Translations

to crowd, to squeeze

• Russian: толпи́ться (ru) n (tolpítʹsja)

References

• “scrouge”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• scourge