scunge
scunge noun: muck, scum, dirt, dirtiness; also used attributively.
Noun
scunge (countable and uncountable, plural scunges)
- Muck, scum, dirt, dirtiness; also used attributively.
- Every saucepan he owned was piled there, caked with unidentifiable scunge.1986, Gary Crew, The Inner Circle, unnumbered page
- In two mad days Scully painted out the whole interior in lime wash, and the place suddenly seemed brighter, bigger, cleaner, and so strangely wholesome that it made him realize how foul it had been before, what scunge he'd really been dealing with day and night.1994, Tim Winton, The Riders, Picador 1996 UK Paperback edition, Ch.8, p.43
- A scrounger; one who habitually borrows.
- Synonyms:
- bludger, moocher, smell-feast, bloodsucker, bummer, freeloader, free rider, gadfly, leech, mooch
- A dirty or untidy person; one who takes no pride in their appearance.
- “You four scunges need to clean yourselves up,″ Jarrad announced — ironic given his own personal hygiene, Jake thought, which was less than impeccable.2008, Pam Withers, Mountainboard Maniacs, page 120
- A scoundrel; a worthless or despicable person.
- The press officer was glad to get me onto the helicopter back to the airbase, as he obviously thought I must be a bit of a scunge asking political questions, when it was my job to report on how well the war was going and how the North was being held.1966, Comment: A New Zealand Quarterly Review, volume 8, page 14
Verb
scunge (third-person singular simple present scunges, present participle scunging or scungeing, simple past and past participle scunged)
- To mark with scunge; to begrime or besmirch.
- “I was scunged. ... I hated myself, hated everything, felt useless and worthless, had no friends, no love, no career, no education, no parents and no tomorrows. It all added up to nothing.”2002, Dennis McDougal, Mary Murphy, Blood Cold: Fame, Sex, and Murder in Hollywood, page 79
- To slink about; to sneak, to insinuate.
- Neither will ye scunge after the gentry like M′Quirkie, and keep your creed in your hand ready to swap it for ony ither that may happen to be mair profitable.1846, author not visible, The Disruption: A Scottish Tale of Recent Times, R. M. Walker (printer), Edinburgh, page 341
- Seizing him in his arms he ran into a shop, and seizing a coil of rope, measured off five or six yards, and fastening this round the dog′s neck, set him down, and giving him a few hearty kicks — ‘Hame wi′ you, ye scunging tyke, hame!’ and thus discovered the laird′s dwelling-place.1948, Old Edinburgh Club, The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, volume 26, page 38
- To scrounge; to borrow.
- The Australian Labor Party in Victoria had a very successful result. Members of the National Party are scunging around trying to win Ballarat!1980, Victorian Parliament, Parliamentary debates (Hansard), volume 353, page 1449
- ‘ […] My business does all the work, and you want to come and scunge a market off me and don′t even have a bet? […] ’2011, Nichola Garvey, Beating the Odds, HarperCollins Australia, unnumbered page
Examples of scunge in a sentence
- We asked questions like, “Do you think we can take a blowtorch to burn that green scunge out of the refrigerator without wrecking the insulation?”2005, David Meurer, If You Want Breakfast in Bed, Sleep in the Kitchen, page 67:
- There was plenty of scunge left, however; in the back streets the smell of dope wafted from the houses.2006, Kate Holden, In My Skin: A Memoir of Addiction, page 130:
Synonyms of scunge
Forms of scunge
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | scunges |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | scunges |
| present participle | scunging |
| present participle | scungeing |
| past participle | scunged |
| past | scunged |
Origin of scunge
Probably related to scrounge.
Questions about scunge
- What does scunge mean?
- Scunge means muck, scum, dirt, dirtiness; also used attributively.
- How do you use scunge in a sentence?
- We asked questions like, “Do you think we can take a blowtorch to burn that green scunge out of the refrigerator without wrecking the insulation?”
- What part of speech is scunge?
- Scunge can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of scunge?
- The plural of scunge is scunges.
Words near scunge in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: scunge (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-scunge.ogg.
Cite this entry: “scunge.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scunge. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.