offscouring

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word offscouring. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word offscouring, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say offscouring in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word offscouring you have here. The definition of the word offscouring will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofoffscouring, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.

English

Etymology

From off- +‎ scouring.

Noun

offscouring (plural offscourings)

  1. Refuse removed from something by scouring.
  2. (figuratively) An outcast, a pariah.
    • 1861, Theodore Winthrop, Washington as a Camp, The Following Is the Oath
      By repeating a form of words after a gentleman in a glazed cap and black raiment, we had suffered change into base assassins, the offscouring of society, starving for want of employment, and willing to “imbrue our coarse fists in fraternal blood” for the sum of eleven dollars a month, besides hard-tack, salt junk, and the hope of a Confederate States bond apiece for bounty, or free loot in the treasuries of Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas, after the war.

Translations