Meanings
scoury1
- Showery, marked by intermittent rain showers and wind.
... scoury sky[…]
1951, Chambers's Edinburgh Journal2 more examples
'... scoury (tempestuous) night.'
1900, Henrietta Keddie, Logan's loyalty, by Sarah Tytler, page 211"... scoury night," he said, as he looked up into the dark, portentous sky.
1910, One Hundred Choice Selections, page 204
scoury2
- Suffering from scouring (diarrhea).
... scoury, weak, drawn up, and unpromising. I still continued to feed the cows heavily because I wanted them to grow the calves well. But I couldn't get the calves to do any good,[…]
1916, American Breeder, page 41 more example
... scoury calves sometimes die. As with so many livestock disorders, prevention is the name of the game. At one time every calf I brought on the farm caught a wicked brand of scours. Evidently, previously purchased baby bovines had[…]
1980, The New Farm - Shabby.
... scoury coat, ...
1977, Harvard University. Library, Harvard Library Bulletin1 more example
... [the] scoury-looking fellow I saw you speaking to at the bridge-end that day of our Sacrament was one of that kind of folk?
1876, James Moir Porteous, Brethren in the Keelhowes: Brethrenism Tested by the Word of God, page 171
Origin
scoury · adjective
- Old Norseskúr“shower”
- Englishscoury
From a dialectal sense of scour, "rain shower", from Old Norse skúr (“shower”), + -y.
More words from Old Norse
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
scoury. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scoury
“scoury.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scoury. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “scoury,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scoury.
Source: scoury on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.