📒 to rub your skin with your nails, usually because it is itching
- scratch something John yawned and scratched his chin.
- scratch (yourself) The dog scratched itself behind the ear.
- Try not to scratch.
📒 to cut or damage your skin slightly with something sharp
- scratch (somebody/something/yourself) I'd scratched my leg and it was bleeding.
- Does the cat scratch?
- scratch somebody/something/yourself on something She scratched herself on a nail.
📒 to damage the surface of something, especially by accident, by making thin shallow marks on it
- Be careful not to scratch the furniture.
- The car's paintwork is badly scratched.
📒 to make or remove a mark, etc. on something deliberately, by rubbing it with something hard or sharp
- They scratched lines in the dirt to mark out a pitch.
- Some graffiti had been scratched on the back of the door.
- We scratched some of the dirt away.
📒 to make an annoying noise by rubbing something with something sharp
- His pen scratched away on the paper.
- We could hear mice scratching behind the wall.
- The dog kept scratching at the door to go out.
📒 to make enough money to live on, but with difficulty
- 75% of the population scratch a living from the soil.
📒 to decide that something cannot happen or somebody/something cannot take part in something, before it starts
- scratch somebody/something to scratch a rocket launch
- scratch somebody/something from something The horse was scratched from the race because of injury.
- scratch (from something) She had scratched because of a knee injury.
📒 to think hard in order to find an answer to something
- Experts have been scratching their heads over the increase in teenage crime.
📒 to deal with, understand, or find out about only a small part of a subject or problem
- We left feeling that we had just scratched the surface of this fascinating country.
- The investigation barely scratched the surface of the city's drug problem.
📒 used to say that if somebody helps you, you will help them, even if this is unfair to others