scumble

/ˈskʌmbəl/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northern England/ˈskʊmbəl/

scumble noun: an opaque kind of glaze (layer of paint).

Noun

scumble (countable and uncountable, plural scumbles)

scumble (third-person singular simple present scumbles, present participle scumbling, simple past and past participle scumbled)

To apply an opaque glaze to an area of a painting to make it softer or duller.
- manure [...] dead leaves [...] and the odd unstomachable meal thrown or vomited there by this or that sensitive epicurean—all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable topsoil in which anything could grow1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
- I want you to scumble the bottom third with sap green.1987, Bernard MacLaverty, short story. "The Drapery Man" (published in The Great Profumo and Other Stories, Jonathan Cape, 1987) - p.35
To apply a painted pattern to the finish of a piece of furniture to simulate the woodgrain of another timber, as for example to give pine an appearance of oak.
- scumbled pine

Noun
plural	scumbles
alternative form	scrumble
Verb
third-person singular present	scumbles
present participle	scumbling
past participle	scumbled
past	scumbled

Uncertain; perhaps from scum with frequentative -le.

2 more rhymesFewer rhymes

What does scumble mean?: Scumble means an opaque kind of glaze (layer of paint).
What part of speech is scumble?: Scumble can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce scumble?: Scumble is pronounced /ˈskʌmbəl/.
What is the plural of scumble?: The plural of scumble is scumbles.

Adapted from Wiktionary: scumble (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: 2026-09-02

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