Definition of "scab" in Englisch

noun

1. An incrustation over a sore, wound, vesicle, or pustule, formed during healing.

2. (colloquial or obsolete) The scabies.

3. The mange, especially when it appears on sheep.

4. (uncountable) Any of several different diseases of potatoes producing pits and other damage on their surface, caused by streptomyces bacteria (but formerly believed to be caused by a fungus).

5. Common scab, a relatively harmless variety of scab (potato disease) caused by Streptomyces scabies.

6. (phytopathology) Any one of various more or less destructive fungal diseases that attack cultivated plants, forming dark-colored crustlike spots.

7. (founding) A slight irregular protuberance which defaces the surface of a casting, caused by the breaking away of a part of the mold.

8. A mean, dirty, paltry fellow.

9. (derogatory, slang) A worker who acts against trade union policies; any picket crosser (strikebreaker), and especially one with devotion to union busting.

   • When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out.

verb

1. (intransitive) To become covered by a scab or scabs.

2. (intransitive) To form into scabs and be shed, as damaged or diseased skin.

   • 1734, Royal Society of London, The Philosophical Transactions (1719 - 1733) Abridged, Volume 7, page 631, Thoſe Puſtules aroſe, maturated, and ſcabbed off, intirely like the true Pox.

3. (transitive) To remove part of a surface (from).

4. (intransitive) To act as a strikebreaker.

5. (transitive, UK, Australia, New Zealand, informal) To beg (for), to cadge or bum.

   • I scabbed some money off a friend.
   • 2004, Niven Govinden, We are the New Romantics, Bloomsbury Publishing, UK, page 143, Finding a spot in a covered seating area that was more bus shelter than tourist-friendly, I unravelled a mother of a joint I′d scabbed off the garçon.
   • 2006, Linda Jaivin, The Infernal Optimist, 2010, HarperCollins Australia, unnumbered page, I′d already used up me mobile credit. I was using a normal phone card, what I got from Hamid, what got it from a church lady what helped the refugees. I didn′t like scabbing from the asylums, but they did get a lotta phone cards.