Word.ws English Dictionary

scug

UK/skʌɡ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/skɐɡ/

scug noun: shade, shadow.

Noun

scug (plural scugs)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland) Shade, shadow.
  2. (Northern England, Scotland) A shelter, a sheltered place (especially on the side of a hill).
    • We was jickering along […] under the scug o' the hill.1897, Outlaws, Hamilton, page 156
  3. (dialectal) A squirrel.
    • "Let's go scug-hunting" is a common phrase. […] a stick with a leaden head, used for knocking down birds and scugs (squirrels).1883, Alfred Easther, A Glossary of the Dialect of Almondbury and Huddersfield, page 78
  4. (dated, slang) A lower-school or inferior boy.
    • […] before the lower school scugs got there, and pitched it in at Acropolis.1865, Bracebridge Hemyng, Butler Burke at Eton, page 75
    • Scug, Et[on]. Har[row]. Negatively, a boy who is not distinguished in person, in games, or social qualities. Positively, a boy of untidy, dirty, or ill-mannered habits; one whose sense of propriety is not fully developed.1881, C. E. Pascoe, Everyday Life in our Public Schools, page 312

Verb

scug (third-person singular simple present scugs, present participle scugging, simple past and past participle scugged)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, transitive) To shelter; to protect.
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, intransitive) To hide; to take shelter.

Forms of scug

Noun
pluralscugs
alternative formskug
alternative Scotlandscoug
alternative Scotlandskoog
Verb
third-person singular presentscugs
present participlescugging
past participlescugged
pastscugged

Origin of scug

Scottish and Northern English from Old Norse skuggi, from Proto-Germanic *skuwwô (“shadow, reflection”). Cognate with Icelandic skuggi, Swedish skugga, Danish skygge, Old English sċūa, sċūwa (“a shade”).

Words that rhyme with scug

23 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about scug

What does scug mean?
Scug means shade, shadow.
What part of speech is scug?
Scug can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce scug?
Scug is pronounced /skʌɡ/ (UK).
What is the plural of scug?
The plural of scug is scugs.

Words near scug in the dictionary

  1. scufter
  2. scuftered
  3. scuftering
  4. scufters
  5. scufts
  6. scug
  7. scugged
  8. scuggery
  9. scugging
  10. Scugog
  11. scugs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scug (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-scug.ogg.

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