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scrub

Pronunciation: /skɹʌb/

The English word “scrub” has 20 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Mean; dirty; contemptible; scrubby.

noun

  1. A thicket or jungle, often specified by the name of the prevailing plant.
  2. Vegetation judged to be of inferior quality or of little use to humans, though sometimes thick and impenetrable, growing in poor soil or in sand; also, brush.
  3. One of the common livestock of a region of no particular breed or not of pure breed, especially when inferior in size, etc.; particularly a male animal poorly suited for breeding.
  4. One who labors hard and lives meanly.
  5. One who is incompetent or unable to complete easy tasks.
  6. One not on the first team of players; a substitute.
  7. A player who whines when outmatched by other players, sometimes by blaming the game mechanics or even accusing the other players of cheating.

verb

  1. To rub hard; to wash with rubbing; usually, to rub with a wet brush, sponge or with something coarse or rough, for the purpose of cleaning or brightening.
  2. To rub anything vigorously, especially with a wet brush; to scour.
  3. Synonym of scrub in (“To thoroughly wash one's hands and forearms in preparation for performing a surgery”).
  4. To be diligent and penurious.
  5. To eliminate or remove (something); to render (something) unretrievable.
  6. To call off (a scheduled event); to cancel (something).
  7. To check data in invoices and other records in order to find, fix, document or otherwise handle anomalies, errors or omissions.
  8. To study in great detail a contract or other agreement in order to identify and remove risks, liability or other issues.
  9. To eliminate or correct (data) from a set of records to bring it inline with other similar datasets.
  10. To remove unflattering or unhelpful information from (something).
  11. To remove impurities from a gas or vapor.
  12. To move or manipulate (something) with an action analogous to scrubbing.

Etymology

Late Middle English shrobbe in the sense of "stunted tree," a variant of shrub, from Old English scrybb. Doublet of shrub.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.