scobs

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /skɒbz/

From Latin scobs, or scobis, from scabere (“to scrape”).

scobs pl (plural only)

1. Raspings of wood, ivory, hartshorn, metals, or other hard substance.
   • 1766, Tobias Smollett, Travels Through France and Italy:

     This was so much the case in antient times that the floor of the dining room was generally covered with scobs or sawdust to absorb what Seneca calls the purgamenta et jactus cænantium, the “excretions and discharges of the guests." The scobs became at length a point of luxury. Heliogabalus ordered the portico to be strewed in lieu of scobs with gold and silver dust, and lamented that he could not find amber enough for that purpose.

   • 2012, Robert Colacurcio, The Education of Grandpa Bobar: In Pursuit of Excellence, page 29:

     Dump your wet scobs in the trash barrel, replace your dust pan, hand broom and #10 can.

   • 2012, J. Richard Murray, Seen and Unseen Worlds: Private Memoirs of a Former Jesuit, page 37:

     On our knees we began by sprinkling “scobs” (lightly oiled sawdust) on a cement stair, then with a hand broom, sweeping those scobs down to the next stair, until we got to the bottom.

   • 2014, John Goodby, “The Uncles”, in Songs of Ourselves, page 27:

     The Uncles Brickell, Swarfega kings, enseamed with swarf and scobs, skin measled with gunmetal but glistening faintly, loud in the smoke.

2. The dross of metals.

   Synonym: scoria

   • 1661, Robert Lovell, Sive Panzoologicomineralogia. Or a Compleat History of Animals and Minerals, page 13:

     The scobs thereof Diose, helps those that are hurt by quicksilver, taken inwardly, or used outwardly, it attracting to it selfe

   • 1919, The Saturday Evening Post - Volume 192, Issues 5-9, page 68:

     scobs and ashes of graphite

   • 1930, Bernard Levi Jefferson, Paul Landis, Arthur Wellesley Secord, Literary Studies for Rhetoric Classes, page 631:

     A scow laden with dead horse , and another laden with scobs and foundry slag, floated by.

scobs

1. third-person singular simple present indicative of scob

scobs

1. plural of scob

• Boscs, SOCBs