scuff
To scrape the feet while walking.
Noun attributive, sometimes
- A mark left by scuffing or scraping.
- Someone left scuff marks in the sand.
- He flung his shoes across the room, their soles leaving black scuffs on the dingy wall. - 2015, Charles W. Jones, Hydrangeas on the Lanai:
- The sound of a scuff or scrape.
- All you could hear was the rhythmic scuff of Mr. Stink’s battered brogues as he walked slowly along the road - 2009 October 29, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Mr Stink, London: HarperCollins...
- A slipper.
- A (sudden) shower of rain or mist.
- It was a dark, gloomy day, with black clouds driven by the wind, and scuffs of grey showers scudding among the hilltops. Presently lying couched amid the heather we saw the dragoons come marching loosely two and two,[…]...
- and when I got [to] the shoulder of the Craig yonder, cold scuffs of mist were reaching down from higher up, that told me how my view was to be spoiled, and warned me to mind my path. But I knew the heights; many a time...
- When, having lunched, we breasted the climbing path in the early afternoon, the mists came down on Dollar Law, and across the valley drifted "scuffs" of soft rain that soaked us ere we topped the summit of the Bitch...
Coordinate Terms: scud
Origin
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.
Forms
Related
Derived
Noun slang
- A scurf; a scale.
- The back part of the neck; the scruff.
- One of the biggest and most redoubted of the Black Family was now in that seat of dignity, and, refusing surlily to yield it at Jasper's rude summons, was seized by the scuff of the neck, and literally hurled on the...
Origin
See scuft
Forms
Related
Verb
- To scrape the feet while walking.
- To scrape and roughen the surface of (shoes, etc.)
- To hit lightly, to brush against.
- The lawns and gardens had been scuffed away. - 1979, V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River:
- Wallace threw himself at it to connect with a flying header. He looked a certain scorer but his effort scuffed the inside of Fraser Forster’s post. - 2011 December 29, Keith Jackson, “SPL: Celtic 1 Rangers 0”, in Daily...
- To mishit (a shot on a ball) due to poor contact with the ball.
- The Montenegro captain was finding space at will and followed up with a speculative shot that he scuffed wide, after Wales were slow in closing down the Juventus striker. - 2011 September 2, “Wales 2-1 Montenegro”, in...