English

Noun

scut ‎(plural scuts)

1. A short, erect tail, as of a hare or rabbit
2. rump, pudenda, ****
   • a. 1602, William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, V, 4, 19

     Mrs. Ford. Sir John ! art thou there, my deer ? my male deer ?

     Falstaff. My doe with the black scut!

   • a. 1968, Keith Roberts, "The Lady Margaret", in Modern Classics of Science Fiction, ed. Gardner R. Dozois, 1993, page 233

     "So ... so she show you her pretty li'l scut, he? [...]."

   • 1997, Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

     One of the sisters backed up to the fire and hiked up the tail of her dress and bent over and thrust out her scut to it and stared at Inman with a look of glazed pleasure in her blue eyes.

3. A ****; whore; hussy
   • 1954, Paul Vincent Carroll, The Wise Have Not Spoken, page 49

     Me scut of a daughter puttin' it on her back in finery. [...]

   • a. 1989, Pat Cadigan, "Pretty Boy Crossover", in Modern Classics of Science Fiction, ed. Gardner R. Dozois, 1993, page 565

     "You scut," she said as we hit the entrance ramp of the interstate. "You're a scut-pumping Conservative.

Translations

Verb

scut ‎(third-person singular simple present scuts, present participle scutting, simple past and past participle scut)

1. To scamper off
   • 1916, James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, (Macmillan Press Ltd, paperback, 47)

     "I know why they scut."

Etymology 2

Probably an alteration of scout (obsolete sense), itself from Middle English

Noun

scut ‎(plural scuts)

1. A contemptible person.
   • 1954, Paul Vincent Carroll, The Wise Have Not Spoken, page 49

     "[...] Me scut of a daughter puttin' it on her back in finery. [...]"

   • a. 1989, Pat Cadigan, "Pretty Boy Crossover", in Modern Classics of Science Fiction, ed. Gardner R. Dozois, 1993, page 565

     "You scut," she said as we hit the entrance ramp of the interstate. "You're a scut-pumping Conservative."

   • 1993, Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa, page 14

     Chris. Danny Bradley is a scut, Rose.

     Rose. I never said it was Danny Bradley!

     Chris. He's a married man with three young children.

   • 2005, Dean Whitlock, Sky Carver, page 108

     "Fat-headed scut. That's what he is, scut. Thinks he runs the whole river."

Etymology 3

From Middle English shoute, scoute, skoute, shute, schuit (=modern Dutch), scut - "flat-bottomed boat, barge; the master of a shoute; also, a sailor on a shoute."

Noun

scut ‎(plural scuts)

1. Distasteful work; drudgery.
   • 1999, Patricia L. Dawson Forged by the Knife: The Experience of Surgical Residency from the Perspective of a Woman of Color, page 100

     "[...] [Female residents] are berated more on rounds, given more scut to do. [...]"

   • 1999, Jonathan Kellerman, Billy Straight, page 112

     "Let's devote mornings to the scut, do real work in the afternoon. [....]"

   • 2001, Catherine Miles Wallace, Motherhood in the Balance: Children, Career, Me, and God, page 163

     And the scut of weeding or washing clothes or waiting in the dentist's waiting room or the soccer field parking lot is actually far less brutalizing than the scut of grading freshman essays [....]

   • 2003, Virginia G. Salazar, Gone: A Sci Fi about Cloning, page 144

     "What if you were called a scut puppy?' "When I first started I was one. A scut puppy is usually a medical student or a nurse who does menial tasks.

   • a. 2004, Clark Howard, "The Leper Colony", in The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: Fifth Annual Collection, ed. Martin H. Greenberg, 2004 page 445

     "[....] So they give the people assigned to the Probation Squad every scut case that other squads don't want to handle."

2. (slang, medicine) Some menial, common unfinished task left for medical students, or some clinically useful training.

Derived terms

• scut monkey
• scut work
• scutwork

References

• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967
• 1986, Joseph Crosby, Joseph Parker Norris, John W. Velz, One Touch of Shakespeare, page 80

Anagrams

• cust
• cuts

Romanian

Etymology

From Latin scūtum ‎(“shield”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *skei- ‎(“to cut, split”), an extension of *sek- ‎(“to cut”).

Noun

scut n ‎(plural scuturi)

1. shield

Related terms

• scuti