scut
/skʌt/US/skʌt/
scut noun: a hare; (hunting, also figuratively) a hare as the game in a hunt.
Noun (1)
scut (plural scuts)
- A hare; (hunting, also figuratively) a hare as the game in a hunt.
- A short, erect tail, as of a hare, rabbit, or deer.
- Shakespeare's use of the word scut may be a sly reference to Mistress Ford's pudenda: see sense 3.
- The buttocks or rump; also, the female pudenda, the vulva.
- I rumpled her Feathers, and tickled her Scut, / And play'd the round Rubbers at two handed Put.1750, “Ge ho, Dobbin or the Waggoner”, in The Tulip, page 2
- Put on your dress, ye shameless witch, standin' there in your pelt I'll take a strap to, for havin' the conceit out of you, for by your idling had lost me the sup of gin to keep the breath of life in me. Cover your scut, or I'll welt the skin off it.1938, Norman Lindsay, chapter XVII, in Age of Consent, London: T[homas] Werner Laurie […], →OCLC, page 177
Noun (2)
scut (plural scuts)
- A contemptible person.
- He sped off towards Conway's corner. God speed scut.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 5: Lotus Eaters]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey], page 82
- "Ye'd see me dyin' for a sup of drink to give me peace, and you philanderin' and danderin' with yon scut of a fellow, and worse doin's behind that, if the truth is told."1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 195
Noun (3)
scut (countable and uncountable, plural scuts)
- Distasteful work; drudgery
- Let's devote mornings to the scut, do real work in the afternoon.1998, Jonathan Kellerman, chapter 17, in Billy Straight: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Random House, →ISBN, page 112; republished London: Headline Publishing Group, 2009, →ISBN
- And the scut of weeding or washing clothes or waiting in the dentist's waiting room or the soccer field parking lot is actually far less brutalizing than the scut of grading freshman essays [...]1999, Catherine Miles Wallace, Dance Lessons: Moving to the Rhythm of a Crazy God, Harrisburg, Pa.: Morehouse Publishing, →ISBN, page 163
- Synonyms:
- chores, drudgery, drudgework, fatigue, razzmatazz, scutwork, swink, toil
- Some menial procedure left for a doctor or medical student to complete, sometimes for training purposes.
- There's no question that it's sexist. [Female residents] are berated more on rounds, given more scut to do.1999, Patricia L. Dawson, Forged by the Knife: The Experience of Surgical Residency from the Perspective of a Woman of Color, Seattle, Wash.: Open Hand Pub., →ISBN, page 100
Verb
scut (third-person singular simple present scuts, present participle scutting, simple past and past participle scut)
- To scamper off.
- ―A fat lot you know about it, Thunder! Wells said. I know why they scut.1916, James Joyce, chapter I, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC, page 41
scut meaning in Tamil and Urdu
scut in Tamil
- குறுவால், முயல், மான் முதலியவற்றின் வால்
scut in Urdu
- خرگوش
Examples of scut in a sentence
- So … so she show you her pretty li'l scut, he?a. 1968, Keith Roberts, “The Lady Margaret”, in Gardner Dozois, editor, Modern Classics of Science Fiction, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s...
- One of the sisters backed up to the fire and hiked up the tail of her dress and bent over and thrust out her scut to it and stared at Inman with a look of glazed pleasure in her blue eyes.1997, Charles Frazier, “To Live Like a Gamecock”, in Cold Mountain: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, →ISBN, page 216:
- Me scut of a daughter puttin' it on her back in finery.1947, Paul Vincent Carroll, The Wise Have Not Spoken: A Drama in Three Acts (French’s Acting Edition; no. 308), London: French, →OCLC...
- Barry Desmond handing Frenchies out to scuts in Fianna Fail.1985, “Delerium Tremens” (track 2), in Ordinary Man, performed by Christy Moore:
Synonyms of scut
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of scut
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | scuts |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | scuts |
| present participle | scutting |
| past participle | scut |
| past | scut |
Origin of scut
From Middle English scut (“hare”); further etymology uncertain, possibly related to Middle English scut, scute (“short”), possibly from Old French escorter, escurter, or Latin excurtāre, scurtāre, from curtō (“to cut short, shorten”), from curtus (“short; shortened”) (from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut off”)) + -ō. A derivation from Old Norse skut, skutr (“stern of a boat”), or Icelandic skott (“animal's tail”) is thought to be unlikely. As to sense 3 (“the female pudenda, the vulva”), see the letter of 5 June 1875 from Joseph Crosby to Joseph Parker Norris published in One Touch of Shakespeare (1986).
Uncertain, possibly a variant of scout (“(obsolete except Scotland) contemptible person”), possibly related to scout (“to reject with contempt; to scoff”), from a North Germanic language; compare Old Norse skúta, skúte (“a taunt”), probably from Proto-Germanic *skeutaną (“to shoot”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kewd- (“to shoot; to throw”). Compare Old Norse skútyrði, skotyrði (“abusive language”).
Uncertain; perhaps related to scut (“contemptible person”): see etymology 2.
Words formed from scut
Phrases with scut
Words that rhyme with scut
Questions about scut
- What does scut mean?
- Scut means a hare; (hunting, also figuratively) a hare as the game in a hunt.
- What is scut in Tamil?
- Scut in Tamil is குறுவால், முயல், மான் முதலியவற்றின் வால். See Scut meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use scut in a sentence?
- So … so she show you her pretty li'l scut, he?
- What part of speech is scut?
- Scut can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce scut?
- Scut is pronounced /skʌt/ (UK).
- What is the plural of scut?
- The plural of scut is scuts.
Words near scut in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: scut (page history and authors); scut (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); scut (Urdu Wiktionary) (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-uk-scut.oga.
Cite this entry: “scut.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scut. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.