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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

scuff.

To scrape the feet while walking.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/skʌf/General-American, Received-Pronunciation/skɐf/Australia, New-Zealand/skʊf/Northern-England
  1. To scrape the feet while walking.

  2. To scrape and roughen the surface of (shoes, etc.)

  3. To hit lightly, to brush against.

  4. To mishit (a shot on a ball) due to poor contact with the ball.

  5. Synonym of scrub in (“To break in new racing tires by doing a few gentle laps on them, with the resulting heat serving to remove factory coatings and provide better grip.”)

Where this word comes from

From Scots scuff (“to touch lightly, graze, hit”), of obscure origin. Perhaps from Old Norse skúfa (“to shove, push aside”), from Proto-Germanic *skeubaną (“to shove”). Or, perhaps imitative. More at shove.

noun/skʌf/General-American, Received-Pronunciation/skɐf/Australia, New-Zealand/skʊf/Northern-England
  1. A mark left by scuffing or scraping.

    attributive · sometimes
    Someone left scuff marks in the sand.
  2. The sound of a scuff or scrape.

  3. A slipper.

    Australia · New-Zealand
  4. A (sudden) shower of rain or mist.

    Scotland · uncommon
Where this word comes from

From Scots scuff (“to touch lightly, graze, hit”), of obscure origin. Perhaps from Old Norse skúfa (“to shove, push aside”), from Proto-Germanic *skeubaną (“to shove”). Or, perhaps imitative. More at shove.

noun/skʌf/General-American, Received-Pronunciation/skɐf/Australia, New-Zealand/skʊf/Northern-England
  1. A scurf; a scale.

    slang
  2. The back part of the neck; the scruff.

Where this word comes from

See scuft

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.