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Wiktionary

scat

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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From Middle English scet, schat, from Old English sċeatt (“property, goods, owndom, wealth, treasure; payment, price, gift, bribe, tax, tribute, money, goods, reward, rent, a tithe; a piece of money, a coin; denarius, twentieth part of a shilling”) and Old Norse skattr (“wealth, treaure, tax, tribute, coin”); both from Proto-Germanic *skattaz (“cattle, kine, wealth, owndom, goods, hoard, treasure, geld, money”), from Proto-Indo-European *skatn-, *skat- (“to jump, skip, splash out”). Cognate with Scots scat (“tax, levy, charge, payment, bribe”), West Frisian skat (“treasure, darling”), Dutch schat (“treasure, hoard, darling, sweetheart”), German Schatz (“treasure, hoard, wealth, store, darling, sweetheart”), Swedish skatt (“treasure, tax, duty”), Icelandic skattur (“tax, tribute”), Latin scateō (“gush, team, bubble forth, abound”).

Alternative forms

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Noun

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scat (plural scats)

  1. A tax; tribute.
  2. (UK dialectal) A land-tax paid in the Shetland Islands.
Translations
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Etymology 2

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Origin uncertain. Both the Oxford English Dictionary[1] and Merriam-Webster[2] suggest derivation from Ancient Greek σκῶρ (skôr, “excrement”), compare English scato-, but Random House Dictionary suggests that the popular character of the word makes this unlikely.[3] Perhaps from English dialectal scat (“to scatter, fling, bespatter”), or an alteration of shit, which is also used for "drugs, heroin".

Alternative forms

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  • skat (brisk shower of rain)
  • skatt (brisk shower of rain)

Noun

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scat (countable and uncountable, plural scats)

  1. (biology) Animal excrement; droppings, dung.
    • 2014 September 22, James Gorman, “For polar bears, a climate change twist [print version: For hungry polar bears, a climate change twist, International New York Times, 24 September 2014, p 12]”, in The New York Times‎[1]:
      They turned to polar bear feces, or scat, as it is commonly called. […] She and Quinoa [a dog] worked with Dr. Rockwell to collect and study samples of polar bear scat for several years and found that the bears were eating lots of geese.
    • 2018 Brent Butt as Brent Herbert Leroy, "Sasquatch Your Language", Corner Gas Animated
      Wherever legitimate tracks are found there's always some fresh scat, y'know, poo, flop, dumplings.
  2. (slang) Heroin.
  3. (slang, obsolete) Whiskey.
  4. (slang, pornography) Coprophilia.
    • 1988, “Pete”, quoted in Seymour Kleinberg, Alienated Affections: Being Gay in America, Macmillan, →ISBN, page 183:
      Enema queens, like scat queens, are really the scum of the earth.
    • 1998, Dennis Cooper, Guide, Grove Press, →ISBN, page 170:
      “ […] I hear he’s into S&M and scat and all kinds of kinky shit. […] ”
    • 2004, Phineas Mollod, Jason Tesauro, The Modern Lover: A Playbook for Suitors, Spouses & Ringless Carousers, Ten Speed Press, →ISBN, page 72:
      In short, when venturing into the realm of extreme fetish, ensure you have an extreme understanding of a partner’s boundaries before laying down a plastic tarp for scat play.
  5. (UK, dialect) A brisk shower of rain, driven by the wind.
    • 1759, Andrew Brice, The Grand Gazetteer, or Topographic Dictionary‎[2], page 677:
      Low black Clouds on it being ſoppoſed to prognoſticate Rain in the Places beneath it, it has been a ſtanding old Saw, When Haldon hath a Hat, Kenton beware a Skat.
Synonyms
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Translations
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Etymology 3

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Probably imitative.[4]

Noun

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scat (plural scats)

  1. (music, jazz) Scat singing.

Verb

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scat (third-person singular simple present scats, present participle scatting, simple past and past participle scatted)

  1. (music, jazz) To sing an improvised melodic solo using nonsense syllables, often onomatopoeic or imitative of musical instruments.

Etymology 4

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From scoot, from the root of shoot. Alternatively, from the expression quicker than scat (“in a great hurry”), perhaps representing a hiss followed by the word cat. Compare Swedish schas (“shoo, begone”). (Can this(+) etymology be sourced?)

Verb

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scat (third-person singular simple present scats, present participle scatting, simple past and past participle scatted)

  1. (colloquial) To leave quickly.
    Here comes the principal; we'd better scat.
    • 2013, Eldot, The Champions, page 245:
      We have to scat! Oh-oh—I forgot to look at the clock!
    • 2013, Cecilia Spiros, The Montoya Saga: Premonitions, page 57:
      Her mother looked at me in fright and quickly scatted with her daughter back down the hall.
    • 2015, Alice McCurdy, A Million Dollar Man Not a Dime From a Dozen, page 115:
      Ali tried talking to this short boy but he quickly scatted away from her.
    • 2019, William Walling, Memo to the Leader, page 85:
      One last word, then I have to scat.

Interjection

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scat

  1. (colloquial) An imperative demand to leave, often understood by speaker and listener as impertinent.
    Scat! Go on! Get out of here!
    • 1903, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Though Life Us Do Part, page 223:
      Scat! Shoo! Scat! Geet up! Geet on! Nobody's sick in this house! Nobody wants you here!
    • 2009, Coleen D'Andrea, The Harbinger, page 30:
      “Scat! Shoo bird!” The bird merely stared, its dark eyes glinting.
    • 2014, Marita Conlon-McKenna, The Hat Shop On The Corner, page 24:
      'Scat! Go on, scat!' she called, trying to shoo it away.
Translations
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Etymology 5

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From the taxonomic name of the family.

Noun

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scat (plural scats)

  1. Any fish in the family Scatophagidae

References

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  1. ^ John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “scat, n.7”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.
  2. ^ “scat”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
  3. ^ “scat”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present, retrieved 2018, reproduced from Stuart Berg Flexner, editor in chief, Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: Random House, 1993, →ISBN.
  4. ^ John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “scat, n.6 and a”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.

Anagrams

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French

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Noun

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scat m (plural scats)

  1. (music) scat

Further reading

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Old English

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Pronunciation

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Verb

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sċāt

  1. first/third-person singular preterite indicative of sċītan

Descendants

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  • English: shat

Old Saxon

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Noun

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scat m

  1. Alternative spelling of skat

Portuguese

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Etymology

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Unadapted borrowing from English scat.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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scat m (uncountable)

  1. scat, coprophilia (sexual interest in feces)
    Synonym: coprofilia
    • 2005, “Avião Brutal do Scat”, in WARderley, performed by U.D.R.:
      Expanda sua mente; aceite um animal
      Participe de uma orgia transexual
      Voando pelos ares, que mal há num boquete?
      Viaje no avião brutal do scat
      Expand your mind; accept an animal
      Take part on a transsexual orgy
      If you're flying through the air, what's bad about a blowjob?
      Travel in the brutal airplane of scat
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