Scrawb
A scratch, a scrape, or a thin line dragged across a surface. As a verb: to scratch or claw. 'The cat gave him a scrawb on the cheek' = the cat scratched him; 'mind you don't scrawb the table' = mind you don't scratch it.
Etymology
From Irish 'scráib' (= scratch, scrape, mark), itself from Old Irish 'scrípaid'. The Ulster Scots and Hiberno-English form preserves the rasping consonant cluster of the Irish original. The standard English 'scrape' and 'scratch' share Germanic roots and arrived at similar meanings from a different direction; Hiberno-English 'scrawb' is the Celtic-derived parallel.
In a sentence
"The brambles gave me a scrawb the length of my arm - it'll be sore tomorrow."
Historical notes
Scrawb is one of the small Hiberno-English Irish-derived nouns that names a particular kind of mark - the thin, sometimes raised, lightly painful scrape that a fingernail, a thorn, or a cat's claw leaves on the skin. The Irish-language origin is clean and the word has not travelled much outside Ulster speech; speakers in the Republic may use it less frequently than 'scratch' or 'scrape'.
Sources
- Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla (Ó Dónaill), entry scráib. · dictionary
- Macafee, Caroline. A Concise Ulster Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1996. · dictionary