Word.ws English Dictionary

scarpering

scarpering is the present participle and gerund of scarper.

Meaning of scarper

Verb

scarper (third-person singular simple present scarpers, present participle scarpering, simple past and past participle scarpered)

  1. (UK, dated, slang, transitive) Chiefly in scarper the letty: to depart quickly or run away from (a place); to flee.
    • We were in debt with the landlady, and Joe and I had decided that none of us should be allowed to "scarper the letty," which means to sneak out of the lodgings without paying. The good lady might have to wait for her money—that was obvious—but we were stuck in Manchester until we could pay and get...1934 May, Philip Allingham, chapter XVI, in Cheapjack […], London: William Heinemann, published March 1935, →OCLC, page 205
  2. (UK, intransitive, slang) To depart quickly; to escape, to flee, to run away.
    • A horse takes fright and "scarpers," or runs away.1862, [C. Clough Robinson], “SCARPER”, in The Dialect of Leeds and Its Neighbourhood, Illustrated by Conversations and Tales of Common Life, etc. […], London: John Russell Smith, […], →OCLC, page 398

See all 3 meanings of scarper

Phrases with scarpering

Questions about scarpering

What is scarpering the present participle and gerund of?
Scarpering is the present participle and gerund of scarper.

Words near scarpering in the dictionary

  1. Scarpelli
  2. Scarpellis
  3. scarper
  4. scarper the letty
  5. scarpered
  6. scarpering
  7. scarpering the letty
  8. scarpers
  9. scarpers the letty
  10. scarpes
  11. scarph

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scarpering (page history and authors); scarper (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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