Word.ws English Dictionary

scrobble

/ˈskɹɒbəl/

scrobble verb: to waylay, kidnap or steal.

Verb (1)

scrobble (third-person singular simple present scrobbles, present participle scrobbling, simple past and past participle scrobbled)

  1. (slang, transitive) To waylay, kidnap or steal.
    • They've tried to scrobble another clergyman who was walking into Tatchester from Tineton.1935, John Masefield, The Box of Delights
    • We have no intention of violating their market truce. More of waiting till she has left the market and scrobbling her...1996, Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere, page 73

Verb (2)

scrobble (third-person singular simple present scrobbles, present participle scrobbling, simple past and past participle scrobbled)

  1. (Internet) To publish one's media consumption habits to the Internet via software, in order to track when and how often certain items are played.

Noun

scrobble (plural scrobbles)

  1. (Internet) A datum or the aggregate data collected by this means.

Forms of scrobble

Verb
third-person singular presentscrobbles
present participlescrobbling
past participlescrobbled
pastscrobbled
Noun
pluralscrobbles

Origin of scrobble

1927, in the book The Midnight Folk by John Masefield.

From the name of the Internet service Audioscrobbler, probably a nonce coinage perhaps based on scribble.

Words that rhyme with scrobble

Questions about scrobble

What does scrobble mean?
Scrobble means to waylay, kidnap or steal.
What part of speech is scrobble?
Scrobble can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce scrobble?
Scrobble is pronounced /ˈskɹɒbəl/.
What is the past tense of scrobble?
The past tense of scrobble is scrobbled.

Words near scrobble in the dictionary

  1. scroats
  2. scrob
  3. scrobal
  4. scrobbed
  5. scrobbing
  6. scrobble
  7. scrobbled
  8. scrobbler
  9. scrobbles
  10. scrobbling
  11. scrobe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scrobble (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-scrobble.ogg.

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