Etymograph

English

scrat

Scrat comes from Middle English scratten.

  1. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500scratten1
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1978scrat1

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, English scrat
  2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1978, A.S. Byatt, The Virgin in The Garden: “He himself had scratted in the thin dust of…”.

Lineage

  1. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500scrattenWiktionary, English scrat
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1978scratWiktionary, English scrat. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1978, A.S. Byatt, The Virgin in The Garden: “He himself had scratted in the thin dust of…”

The story

Further etymology uncertain; apparently related to cratch, from Middle English cratchen, cracchen (‘to scratch’), alteration of *cratsen (‘to scratch’).uncertain The source flags this step as uncertain. The root is Germanic and may be inherited from Proto-West Germanic. According to SAOB, a related word is apparently Old Swedish kraza (‘to quarrel, to fight’), which could suggest a relation to English craze, from Old Norse *krasa (‘to shatter’).

Full etymology on Wiktionary

Every English word from Middle English scratten

Today it means

verb To scratch or scrape.

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “scrat”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Middle English scratten / scrat

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