Word.ws English Dictionary

outscrape

outscrape verb: to escape.

Verb

outscrape (third-person singular simple present outscrapes, present participle outscraping, simple past and past participle outscraped)

  1. (Scotland, intransitive, obsolete) To escape
  2. (rare, transitive) To scrape out
    • The chairs were five degrees above Windsor, the carpet was ingrain, with huge circles, whose outlines were nearly outscraped, it having been stamped under foot for many years before Madam Tag had forced it to do a passive duty in her oracular chambers.1844, The Family of the Seisers: A Satirical Tale of the City of New York
  3. (transitive) To scrape better than; exceed or outdo in scraping
    • But there was neither harmony nor melody in their tones, for they belonged to the different stages and shows ; and if the musicians agreed in any thing, it seemed only in the efforts which they made to outscrape, outscreech, outblow and outdrum each other.1837, Mary Martha Sherwood, The history of Henry Milner, page 217
    • Separation has only led to forced mobility, traffic congestion, anti-human city centres with one concrete office tower outscraping the next, subsidized and shoddy public transport etc.1974, The Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa

Forms of outscrape

third-person singular presentoutscrapes
present participleoutscraping
past participleoutscraped
pastoutscraped

Origin of outscrape

From out- + scrape, or possibly continuing Middle English outscrapen (“to remove, erase”).

Questions about outscrape

What does outscrape mean?
Outscrape means to escape.
What part of speech is outscrape?
Outscrape is a verb.
What is the past tense of outscrape?
The past tense of outscrape is outscraped.

Words near outscrape in the dictionary

  1. outscourings
  2. outscout
  3. outscouted
  4. outscouting
  5. outscouts
  6. outscrape
  7. outscream
  8. outscreamed
  9. outscreaming
  10. outscreams
  11. outscriber

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: outscrape (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “outscrape.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/outscrape. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.