Word.ws English Dictionary

scumball

scumball adjective: sleazy, disreputable, or despicable.

Adjective

scumball (comparative more scumball, superlative most scumball)

  1. (slang) Sleazy, disreputable, or despicable.
    • "This kid, your scumball client, also has a rap sheet six pages long. He shot a sixteen-year-old in the back last year and got sixty days on a piss-ass weapons violation because the victim wouldn't testify. […]1996, Barbara Parker, Blood Relations, Signet, published 1997, →ISBN, page 315
    • "I can't help it if your uncle and his scumball friends keep crawling out from under every rock that gets turned over in this town."1999, Lynn Emery, After All, Arabesque Books, →ISBN, page 136

Noun

scumball (plural scumballs)

  1. (slang) A sleazy, disreputable, or despicable person; a lowlife.
    • "Answer me. How would you feel if I was the one who might get knifed in the gullet by some scumball?"2002, Iris Johansen, Body of Lies, Bantam Books, →ISBN, page 158
    • Recently widowed and still grieving over the loss of her husband, his mother had been an easy mark for a scumball like Jacob. Playing on her weakened emotional state, within two months Jacob had sweet-talked her into marrying him.2006, Peggy Moreland, The Texan's Convenient Marriage, Harlequin, →ISBN, pages 33–34

Examples of scumball in a sentence

  • Another fifty grand for Shuttles; the scumball business was booming.2006, Jack Kerley, A Garden of Vipers, Dutton, →ISBN, page 288:
  • That's a man for you — a real scumball."2007, Haruki Murakami, After Dark (trans. Jay Rubin), Vintage International (2007; original Japanese novel published 2004), page 84

Synonyms of scumball

Forms of scumball

Adjective
comparativemore scumball
superlativemost scumball
Noun
pluralscumballs

Origin of scumball

From scum + -ball.

Questions about scumball

What does scumball mean?
Scumball means sleazy, disreputable, or despicable.
How do you use scumball in a sentence?
Another fifty grand for Shuttles; the scumball business was booming.
What part of speech is scumball?
Scumball can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near scumball in the dictionary

  1. scumbag
  2. scumbaggery
  3. scumbagginess
  4. scumbaggy
  5. scumbags
  6. scumball
  7. scumballs
  8. scumber
  9. scumbered
  10. scumbering
  11. scumbers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scumball (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-scumball.ogg.

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