Word.ws English Dictionary

Scrooge McDuck

Scrooge McDuck verb: to dive into money; to swim around in money.

scrooge mcduck: to dive into money; to swim around in money
Image: ZoraSilv, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

Scrooge McDuck (third-person singular simple present Scrooge McDucks, present participle Scrooge McDucking, simple past and past participle Scrooge McDucked)

  1. (slang, literal) To dive into money; to swim around in money.
    • If I had a dollar for every time some probably well-meaning but clueless dude took my instrument from my hands to hook it up or went to plug in my amp or pedals for me I'd be Scrooge McDucking it all day long[…]2011 September, Maximum Rocknroll 340
    • We opened them and obscene (to us children) amounts of money fell out. Woo hoo! Money! We Scrooge McDucked, rolling on the living room floor in what was probably a pile of twenty bucks but felt like a fortune to us.2015, Vicki Lesage, Christmas Confessions & Cocktails: A Humorous Holiday Memoir with Sassy Drink Recipes
  2. (figuratively, slang) To revel in ones wealth and success.
    • From what I can tell, the baby-faced cabal of DigiTour Winter artists, […] are all about ready to Scrooge McDuck through some new school coin, thanks to their adorably populist YouTube accounts and Snapchat followings.2016 December 21, The Stranger (Volume 26, Issue 17), page 25
    • Willabie snorted. “That old coot? The last time he deigned to talk to his youngest child, he was still Scrooge McDucking his way through the Fort Lauderdale social scene.”2017, Jesse J. Holland, Black Panther: Who is the Black Panther?, a Novel of the Marvel Universe

Noun

Scrooge McDuck (plural Scrooge McDucks)

  1. (slang) Someone with immense wealth.
    • I, RONNIE DUCKWORTH, do hereby will nothing because I come from a long line of "Scrooge McDucks".1960, Blowing Rock High School, The Breezes [1960]
    • The NBA owners looked like cartoonish money hoarders, a gaggle of Scrooge McDucks.2010, FreeDarko (Collective), The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History
    Synonyms:
    fat cat
  2. (slang) A greedy person.
    • With dollar signs in our eyes, we stared at the pennies like a pack of Scrooge McDucks.1997, Dan Peavler, Fatherhood - a Journey Through
    • In later years one analyst claimed that these programs turned Americans into “a nation of moneygrubbing Scrooge McDucks.”2001, Jim Cox, The Great Radio Audience Participation Shows: Seventeen Programs from the 1940s and 1950s

Examples of Scrooge McDuck in a sentence

  • A misconception about selling out is that every last government official inside the Beltway is clamoring to Scrooge McDuck into a giant pool of gold coins;[…]2016, Eliot Nelson, The Beltway Bible: A Totally Serious A-Z Guide to Our No-Good, Corrupt, Incompetent, Terrible, Depressing, and...
  • The perception that restaurant owners are out here Scrooge McDucking into vaults full of money—on the whole, that’s not the case.2019 November 27, Star Tribune, City Pages - 27 November 2019, page 13:
  • It’s true that the Scrooge McDucks wield too much power here, […]1997, Marty Jezer, Stuttering:
  • The flour industry’s Scrooge McDucks did not appreciate the potential competition.2013 October 30, Seattle Weekly Vol. 38, No. 44:

Synonyms of Scrooge McDuck

Forms of Scrooge McDuck

Verb
third-person singular presentScrooge McDucks
present participleScrooge McDucking
past participleScrooge McDucked
pastScrooge McDucked
Noun
pluralScrooge McDucks

Origin of Scrooge McDuck

Verb sense evoking a recurring gag in which the wealthy eponymous cartoon duck dives into, and swims around in, a giant pile of gold coins. The etymology of the name, from Ebenezer Scrooge (alluding to his wealth) + Mc- (reflecting his Scottish ancestry) + duck (denoting his species).

Questions about Scrooge McDuck

What does Scrooge McDuck mean?
Scrooge McDuck means to dive into money; to swim around in money.
How do you use Scrooge McDuck in a sentence?
A misconception about selling out is that every last government official inside the Beltway is clamoring to Scrooge McDuck into a giant pool of gold coins;[…]
What part of speech is Scrooge McDuck?
Scrooge McDuck can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of Scrooge McDuck?
The past tense of Scrooge McDuck is Scrooge McDucked.

Words near Scrooge McDuck in the dictionary

  1. scrooch
  2. scrooched
  3. scrooches
  4. scrooching
  5. scrooge
  6. Scrooge McDuck
  7. Scrooge McDucked
  8. Scrooge McDucking
  9. Scrooge McDucks
  10. scrooge-like
  11. Scroogean

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Scrooge McDuck (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: “Scrooge McDuck.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scrooge_mcduck. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.