Word.ws English Dictionary

scum of the earth

scum of the earth noun: an undesirable individual; the worst type of person or people.

Noun

scum of the earth (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory, idiomatic, informal) An undesirable individual; the worst type of person or people.
    • Child abusers and pedophiles are the scum of the earth.
    • When I see people who arrive here legitimately seeking refuge and shelter, and they are treated as the scum of the Earth and they are sentenced to awful detention and sometimes death by both major political parties […]2018 August 20, “Q&A: John Marsden says he would not have written the Tomorrow series today”, in ABC News, archived from the original on 21 Jul 2019

Antonyms of scum of the earth

Questions about scum of the earth

What does scum of the earth mean?
Scum of the earth means an undesirable individual; the worst type of person or people.
What part of speech is scum of the earth?
Scum of the earth is a noun.

Words near scum of the earth in the dictionary

  1. sculpturists
  2. sculptury
  3. sculs
  4. sculsh
  5. scum
  6. scum of the earth
  7. scum valve
  8. scum valves
  9. scum-ridden
  10. scumbag
  11. scumbaggery

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scum of the earth (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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