Word.ws English Dictionary

scouring

UK/ˈskaʊə.ɹɪŋ//ˈskaʊ.ɚ.ɪŋ/

scouring noun: the act of cleaning a surface by rubbing it with a brush, soap and water. Also the present participle and gerund of scour.

Noun

scouring (plural scourings)

  1. The act of cleaning a surface by rubbing it with a brush, soap and water.
  2. Diarrhea. (Now used only of livestock, though also sometimes used of humans into the 1600s.)
    • Another for a violent scouring. Take the Entrails of a Pullet, or great Chicken, all but the Gizzard, and mix with tbem of Spikenard one Ounce, ' and make him swallow it, and this will infallibly stay his Scouring, yea, though it be a Bloody-Flux.1720, E. R. (Gent.), The Experienc'd Farrier: Or Farring Compleated. Containing Every Thing that Belongs to a Compleat Horseman, page 332
    • For that kind of lax and scouring called bloody flux, see the article BLOODY FLUX.1766, Thomas Wallis (surgeon), The Farrier's and Horseman's Complete Dictionary: Containing the Art of Farriery in All Its Branches
  3. Erosion by water, especially in watercourses.
    • It was also found that scouring had occurred in the bed of the mill lade, which passes between the first and second piers.1950 January, “Re-Opening of the Eyemouth Branch”, in Railway Magazine, page 11

Also used as

scouring is also the present participle and gerund of scour.

scouring meaning in Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada

scouring in Telugu

స్కౌరింగ్

scouring in Malayalam

സ്കൌറിംഗ്

scouring in Kannada

ಸ್ಕೌರಿಂಗ್

Examples of scouring in a sentence

  • Thus in 1670 the London bills ascribe 142 deaths to “bloody flux, scouring, and flux,” and 3,690 to “griping in the guts.”1840, London Medical Gazette: Or, Journal of Practical Medicine, page 683:
  • Flux, bloody flux and scouring feature from the first, but were overtaken in the 1650s by 'plague in the guts', soon renamed 'griping in the guts'.2011, V. Berridge, M. Gorsky, Environment, Health and History, Springer, →ISBN, page 37:

All 18 example sentences with scouring

Forms of scouring

pluralscourings

Words formed from scouring

Phrases with scouring

Questions about scouring

What does scouring mean?
Scouring means the act of cleaning a surface by rubbing it with a brush, soap and water.
What is scouring in Telugu?
Scouring in Telugu is స్కౌరింగ్. See Scouring meaning in Telugu.
How do you use scouring in a sentence?
Thus in 1670 the London bills ascribe 142 deaths to “bloody flux, scouring, and flux,” and 3,690 to “griping in the guts.”
What part of speech is scouring?
Scouring is a noun.
How do you pronounce scouring?
Scouring is pronounced /ˈskaʊə.ɹɪŋ/ (UK).
What is the plural of scouring?
The plural of scouring is scourings.

Words near scouring in the dictionary

  1. scourgingly
  2. scourgings
  3. scourie
  4. scouries
  5. scourin'
  6. scouring
  7. scouring brush
  8. scouring brushes
  9. scouring down
  10. scouring pad
  11. scouring pads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scouring (page history and authors); scouring (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); scouring (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); scouring (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-scouring.wav.

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