scrunt

S1C3R1U1N1T1
/skɹʌnt/

noun

An abrupt, high-pitched sound.

Scrabble 8
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Meanings

scrunt1

nounscrunt (plural scrunts)

plural scrunts

  1. An abrupt, high-pitched sound.

    They rose, and the scrunt of Janet's chair on the floor, when she pushed it behind her, sent a thrilling shiver through her body, so tense was her mood.

    2004, George Douglas Brown, The House with the Green Shutters, Kessinger Publishing, →ISBN, page 243
    2 more examples

    Just as they were in the roughest part of the mountains, there was a wild shriek of the whistle, a sudden scrunt of the air-brakes, and the train, with an abruptness that was just short of an accident, stopped.

    1894, Robert Barr, "Held Up," McClure's Magazine, 1893-1894 Dec-May, p. 309

    But Jess would not budge, and all of a sudden I sees a white flash in the dark, and hears a rattle of harness, and a scrunt in the shafts as Jess shook her head clear of the blow.

    1901, David S. Meldrum, "The Conquest of Charlotte," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, v.171, 1902 Jan-Jun, pg. 128

scrunt2

nounscrunt (plural scrunts)

plural scrunts

  1. A beggar or destitute person.

    And without my work what am I but an unemployed scrunt on the meat market of the streets?

    1987, David Rabe, Hurlyburly: A Play, publ. Samuel French, Inc., →ISBN, page 112
    2 more examples

    It's a fine, ennobling thing, is poverty. It would make me a brutal scrunt, and you a whinging harridan in three years.

    1938, James Bridie, The Last Trump, Constable, page 29

    Not slum-dweller socialist but high-class fanny socialist. [...] Socialism that drinks wine - a single bottle costs a year's pay to a fuckin scrunt like Uxbridge.

    2005, Ronan O'Donnell, The Doll Tower, →ISBN, page 20
verbscrunt (third-person singular simple present scrunts, present participle scrunting, simple past and past participle scrunted)

present singular third person scrunts · participle present scrunting · participle past scrunted · past scrunted

  1. To beg or scrounge.

    On the other hand in countries where people scrunt to live, the birth rate is high.

    1976 February 2, Alister Hughes, “Love Carefully”, in The Virgin Islands Daily News
    2 more examples

    Four out of every five women are forced to stay at home or scrunt for a meagre existence.

    1979, Maurice Bishop, Selected Speeches, 1979-1981, Casa de las Américas, pg. 11

    As a woman of color living in the north of Metropole, anything that I did dig up I really had to scrunt for.

    1996, Defining Ourselves: Black Writers in the 90s, publ. P. Lang, published 1999, →ISBN, page 69

Origin

scrunt · noun

Onomatopoetic.

Full word history & related roots →

scrunt · noun, verb

Unknown etymology. The term appears related to Old Norse *skrindr (“starved, meager, emaciated, haggard, thin”), found as Old Swedish skrinder, Swedish skrinn, skrin, Norwegian skrann, skrinn, potentially related to Lithuanian skrèsti (“getting scabby”). A related root is found in scrawny, scranny and scrannel, to an old root for drying out, such as Old English scrinian (“to dry”); compare Swedish skranig, skranglig, skral, skran, Norwegian skran, Danish skrån (“scrawny, meager, dry, barren”). More direct cognates appear to exist in North Germanic, with the comparative root sense of “skeleton, dried body” → “decrepit, frail, rickety (person)”, but many roots appear to be at play (compare Proto-Germanic *skraudō): dialectal Norwegian skrunt (“fruit scraps”) (such as an “apple core (apple skeleton), eaten apple, apple scraps” (and thereof)), skrunta (“(skin) crease”), dialectal Swedish skrynta, skrönta (“body, back, shoulderblade, hollow tree (tree skeleton)”), with a predominant variation without the -n-: dialectal Norwegian skrott (“body; fruit scraps”), Swedish skrutt, skrott (“scrap, decrepit (old) useless person, scrotum, dried wrinkly body, skeleton, the devil”) (skrutta f, äppelskrutt (“eaten apple”), skruttig (adjective)), dialectal Danish skrut, skrutte (“body, skeleton, back, humpback”), skrot (“body, belly”). Swedish skrutt appears related semantically to both Icelandic skrjóður (“scrap, old geezer, scrotum”) and English scrote, with the same three core principles: scrap, useless old dry person, scrotum.

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Rhymes with scrunt

wantfronthuntauntbluntwontconfrontpuntstuntupfrontBlountgruntshuntbruntbuntluntaffrontruntbundtspruntdoesn'tpruntRex Huntsacrifice bunt
All rhymes →
Cite this entry
APA

scrunt. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scrunt

MLA

“scrunt.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scrunt. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “scrunt,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scrunt.

Source: scrunt on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.