_scrub_
Verb.
Pronunciation: skrʌb.
Etymology: of uncertain
origin.
Preterite tense, preterite
participle: scrubbed.
Present
participle: scrubbing.
It is dated from
the beginning of 1300.
Transitively: 1. To rub (a floor, wood, one’s skin, etc.)
with a brush (or anything rough) and water, in order to clean or brighten it; to
wash with rubbing.
Translation:
cepillar, in Spanish; brosser, in French; spazzolare, in Italian.
When the schoolmaster came back from New York, he found his wife on her
knees scrubbing the front
vestibule.
Elizabeth Phelps… The successors of Mary the first
[…] certainly when he
laughed, his teeth always shewed that they had been diligently scrubbed for the purpose of being
displayed.
Robert Semple… Charles
Ellis
To prepare the hands for making an examination the nails should be cut
short, trimmed and smoothly polished, and scrubbed for three minutes
with soap and brush and warm water.
The Hot Springs Medical Journal, Volume 5
Let the potatoes be large, of equal size, and well washed and scrubbed.
Margaret Dods… The Cook and Housewife's Manual
[Mrs. Vyse] was one of those excellent housewives who, from her over
desire to have her house so particularly clean, always had it in a mess from
the very fact of being continually cleaning it. Either the stairs were wet and
the carpets up —or else all the furniture was wheeled out of one room into
another —[…] —or the paint was being scrubbed down […]— so that it was almost impossible to sit down in any room one wanted,
or to walk up-stairs, or along the passage, without tumbling over a pailful of
water.
Henry Mayhew – A. Mayhew… The
image of his father
The
captain of the afterguard came forward, and putting the boy’s head between his
knees, scrubbed his teeth well with the sand
and canvas for two or three minutes.
Frederick Marryat… Peter Simple
-) Also found in reflexive construction:
[…] you can go to the baths round
the corner, and scrub yourself from head to foot.
Hunt Caffyn… A yellow aster
[…]
they go to the bath, where they [… stay during] hours, scrubbing themselves with a handful of vegetable fiber called
"mahalka," pouring innumerable basins of scalding water over their bodies.
Marguerite Harrison… Marooned in
Moscow
2. Metaphor: to
eliminate or cancel, as if by washing.
Intransitively: 1. To rub something with a brush (or anything rough) and
water, in order to clean or brighten it; to cleanse or brighten something by
rubbing; to work as a scrubber.
She scrubbed, and washed, and
swept.
Appletons' Journal, Volume 2
Betsy’s mother went out charing. All the day long she scrubbed and cleaned and
rubbed at other people's goods and chattels.
Lucy Clifford… Anyhow stories
-) Specially: to
disinfect one’s hands by rubbing them with a brush, preparatory to performing a
surgical operation:
2. (The subject being a
horse-rider) to
urge the horse to move faster, by rubbing it with one’s hands and legs.
Other
English words derived from SCRUB: scrubber,
scrubbing, scrub (noun), scrubbable, scrubby.
