Word.ws English Dictionary

scabbed

scabbed is the simple past and past participle of scab.

Adjective

scabbed (comparative more scabbed, superlative most scabbed)

  1. Affected or covered with scabs.
  2. (broadly) Vile; worthless.
    • To you such scab’d harsh fruit is given, as raw / Young soldiers at their exercisings gnaw,1693, “Satire V”, in John Dryden, transl., The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis, and of Aulus Persius Flaccus, volume 1, London: Stanhope Press, translation of Satires by Juvenal, published 1812...

Meaning of scab

Verb

scab (third-person singular simple present scabs, present participle scabbing, simple past and past participle scabbed)

  1. (intransitive) To become covered by a scab or scabs.
  2. (intransitive) To form into scabs and be shed, as damaged or diseased skin.
    • Thoſe Puſtules aroſe, maturated, and ſcabbed off, intirely like the true Pox.1734, Royal Society of London, The Philosophical Transactions (1719 - 1733) Abridged, Volume 7, page 631
  3. (transitive) To remove part of a surface (from).
    • The beds shall be scabbed off to give a solid bearing, no pinning shall be admitted between the backing and the face stones and there shall be a good square joint not exceeding one inch in width, and the face stone shall be scabbed off to allow this.1891, Canadian Senate, Select Committee on Railways, Telegraphs and Harbours: Proceedings and Evidence, page 265
  4. (intransitive) To act as a strikebreaker.
    • Don't scab for the bosses / Don't listen to their lies / Us poor folks haven't got a chance / Unless we organize.1931, “Which Side Are You On?”, performed by Florence Patton Reece
  5. (Australia, New Zealand, UK, informal, transitive) To beg (for), to cadge or bum.
    • I scabbed some money off a friend.

See all 14 meanings of scab

Synonyms of scabbed

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of scabbed

comparativemore scabbed
superlativemost scabbed

Words formed from scabbed

Questions about scabbed

What does scabbed mean?
Scabbed means affected or covered with scabs.
What is scabbed the simple past and past participle of?
Scabbed is the simple past and past participle of scab.
What part of speech is scabbed?
Scabbed is an adjective.

Words near scabbed in the dictionary

  1. scabbardfish
  2. scabbardfishes
  3. scabbarding
  4. scabbardless
  5. scabbards
  6. scabbed
  7. scabbedness
  8. scabbery
  9. scabbier
  10. scabbiest
  11. scabbily

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scabbed (page history and authors); scab (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.

Last updated:

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