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Scrub   /skrəb/   Listen
Scrub

verb
(past & past part. scrubbed; pres. part. scrubbing)
1.
Clean with hard rubbing.  Synonym: scour.
2.
Wash thoroughly.  Synonym: scrub up.
3.
Postpone indefinitely or annul something that was scheduled.  Synonyms: call off, cancel, scratch.  "Cancel the dinner party" , "We had to scrub our vacation plans" , "Scratch that meeting--the chair is ill"



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"Scrub" Quotes from Famous Books



... slopes, and quietest of rivers. She meets the little set of Concord people: Mr. Alcott, for whom she does not share Mr. Emerson's enthusiasm; and William Ellery Channing, whose figure stands out like a gnarled and twisted scrub-oak,—a pathetic, impossible creature, whose cranks and oddities were submitted to on account of an innate nobility of character. "Generally crabbed and reticent with strangers, he took a liking to me," says ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... voice of determined gentleness, "just listen to me. Would I ask you to do anything that wouldn't be for your happiness? I have found a real pretty house up on Fifteenth Street; and we'll keep house together, just as cosey; and have a woman come to wash and iron and scrub, so it won't be a bit hard; and be right on the street-cars; and you won't have to drudge helping Mrs. Carleton extra times ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... light a fire even at night, as it might have attracted the blacks; therefore they took it in turn to sleep and watch when the others rested; while the dingoes sneaked from their cover in the belts of scrub, and ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... cluster by a bench before the cookhouse, dabble their faces and hands in washbasins, scrub themselves promiscuously on towels, sometimes one at each end of a single piece of cloth, hauling it back and ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... about Jack Denver. He was on the committees at agricultural shows and sports, great at picnics and dances, beloved by school children at school feasts (I wonder if they call them feasts still), giver of extra or special prizes, mostly sovs. and half-sovs., for foot races, etc.; leading spirit for the scrub district in electioneering campaigns—they went as right as men could go in the politics of those days who watched and went the way Jack Denver went; header of subscription lists for burnt-out, flooded-out, sick, hurt, dead or killed or otherwise knocked-out ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... the line o' the British craft; The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and laughed:— "It's mainsail haul, my bully boys all—we'll out to the seas again— Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, or scrub at his grapnel-chain. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... nice person to have around. She was going to stay with them all winter; Gertrude was going to teach her German and music, and she was going to teach Gertrude how to cook. She was doing all the work just now, she and the neighbors. Mrs. Ferry came in every morning to scrub the kitchen and black the stove. They said Gertrude must keep her hands nice—Philip had seemed more worried about her hands than about anything else, all the time he was sick. Did he see how soft and white they were? She had been washing them in buttermilk—the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... narrow valley which was strewn with great bowlders, and on the sides of the hills grew a great many scrub pines. Through the center of it ran the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... of the island, but further east, extended wide central tracts of pine and scrub-oak, (charcoal was largely made here,) monotonous and sterile. But many a good day or half-day did I have, wandering through those solitary crossroads, inhaling the peculiar and wild aroma. Here, and all along the island and its shores, I spent intervals many years, all seasons, sometimes riding, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... colonization, he saw the blue-green edge of Syrtis Major, the greatest of the thickets, with here and there a jutting spur of it projecting toward him along a gully. Nelsen's hide tingled. But his first glimpse was handicapped by distance. He saw only an expanse of low shagginess that might have been scrub growths ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... man of many hues! how much time will you need to paint and stain and grizzle and grain and tint and stripe and fill and shellac and oil and rub and scrub and cut and draw and putty and sand-paper and size and distemper and border and otherwise exalt and glorify the walls and woodwork of our house, after the other workmen are through, making allowance for what you have already done and will be able to do ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... were intervals of keen joy: water, sand and clay chiefly absorbed the younger children: the older ones wanted to wash up and scrub, and many spent a good deal of time looking at picture-books. This was the raw material for the teacher to begin with: the children came from comfortable suburban homes: none were really poor, and many had known no privation. They were keen for experiences ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... the boys produced the brushes and proceeded to scrub the Fortuna until she shone—as Tom ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... of superstition clinging parasitically to all religions, though formally recognized by none. Whether we call it fetichism, shamanism, nature worship or heathenism in its myriad forms, it is there in awful reality. It is as omnipresent, as persistent, as hard to kill as the scrub bamboo which both efficiently and sufficiently takes the place of thorns and thistles as ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... I stretched Scrub Greene an' wint to the orf'cer's tent. 'Twas a new little bhoy—not wan I'd iver seen before. He was sittin' in his tent, purtendin' not to 'ave ear av ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... 0% permanent crops: 0% other: 100% (mostly rock with sparse scrub oak, few trees, some commercial salt ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... Janey, "and she mopped his floors, washed and clean-papered the shelves, and wanted to scrub the ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... joy of his heart and he made excursions constantly to see that they were kept in order. They were simple enough, wide tracks, grass covered, cut through the scrub or through the plantations; but trees had to be rooted out, rocks dug up or blasted, and here and there levelling had been necessary. He was proud that he had surmounted by his own skill such difficulties as they ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... in motion: four companies, with a 12-pounder and two 5-inch guns, under Major Davies, preceded the force, with the intention of capturing the big Boer gun; four companies, with two field guns, under Captain Jacson, made a flanking movement through scrub and dongas round the left. Very little opposition was met with. The mounted troops captured a few prisoners, and it was found that the Boers had blown up their big gun. This was the gun that had been situated on Pepworth Hill, and which had been disabled by one of the Naval Brigade's ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson

... where the rocks begin to show through the surface, and scrub pine abounds. At the end of our side-line was another, and at the end of that a village, the ultimate outpost of civilisation. Here, on the way back, some weeks later, we had to spend the night in a little hotel which 'accommodated transients.' It was ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke

... had finished their work for the day, and nothing now remained to be done except to disrobe, take a quick scrub down after their severe exercise, don their clothes and take their time in ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... wood scare mother and my aunt Sarah and my two sisters to deth. then Pewt he sed less dig up some of those red stink wirms behine the barn and put a handfull in his hat. you know they smell so that you have to use soft soap and sand and scrub your hands 2 or 3 days before you can get it off. so neether of us wanted ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute

... in the most battered of tin baths full of clean hot water and to splash and scrub with a big piece of flannel and plenty of soap was a marvelous thing. The Rat's tired body responded to the novelty with a curious feeling of freshness ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Hiram's gaze traveled again and again across the scrub-grown meadow. The lay of the land pleased him. The richness of the soil had been revealed when they ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... went with him in his thoughts along the turf by the wayside halfway and more to Chichester. He thought always of the two of them as being side by side. His imagination became childishly romantic. The open down about him with its scrub of thorn and yew became the wilderness of the world, and through it they went—in armour, weightless armour—and they wore long swords. There was a breeze blowing and larks were singing and something, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... it is believed both sexes assemble. The meetings of the M. superba are sometimes very large; and an account has lately been published (3. Quoted by Mr. T.W. Wood, in the 'Student,' April 1870, p. 125.) by a traveller, who heard in a valley beneath him, thickly covered with scrub, "a din which completely astonished" him; on crawling onwards he beheld, to his amazement, about one hundred and fifty of the magnificent lyre-cocks, "ranged in order of battle, and fighting with indescribable fury." The bowers of the Bower- birds are the resort of both ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... last scrub timber and straggling copses, into the heart of the Barrens where the niggard North is supposed to deny the Earth, are to be found great sweeps of forests and stretches of smiling land. But this the world is just beginning to know. The world's explorers have known ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... Scandinavian forest could not be more dreary and savage. After tracking the gloomy depths of shade for a considerable distance, it was an agreeable change to quit the forest and warm our blood by cantering up a slope of scrub. Then, after crossing a grassy hollow, we came among scattered woods of the most magnificent oaks, both evergreen and deciduous, I ever saw. Some of the trees were of enormous size, and if the quality of the timber be equal to the scantling, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... apparently prosaic round of everyday life will be found a variety of themes. A circular letter from a business firm announcing a new policy, a classified advertisement in a newspaper, the complaint of a scrub-woman, a new variety of fruit in the grocer's window, an increase in the price of laundry work, a hurried luncheon at a cafeteria—any of the hundred and one daily experiences may suggest a "live" topic for ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... I will suggest that you reflect upon the reality of your condition. In any event, what will become of yourself? Hey? And what will become of this darling crew of yours, we hold prisoners below? And what will become of this scrub, here in the chair—this apple ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... Scrub clean (but do not peel) the carrot and turnip. Wash celery, parsley, and barley. Shred all the vegetables finely; put in saucepan with the water. Bring to the boil and slowly simmer for 5 hours. Add ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel

... us that there were no Boers in possession, and that nothing would come of the ride after all, and we drew bridle and started to discuss the situation. At that time we were not far from the edge of some kopjes, which, though lying low, were covered with rocky boulders and low scrub. ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... Washington, with which it was connected by railroad. This was the starting point. Lee's army was about fifteen miles away, with the Rapidan, a river difficult of passage, in front of it, the foothills of the Blue Ridge on its left, and on its right a densely wooded tract of scrub pines and various low growths, almost pathless, known as ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen

... the heavy tables, to scrub them, to be exact in placing the sheet. Her head cleared; she was able to look calmly in at her husband and the farmwife while they undressed the wailing man, got him into a clean nightgown, and washed his arm. Kennicott came to lay out his instruments. She realized that, with no ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... to be a large patch of scrub timber, all the large trees having been cut down to feed the old saw-mill, which still stood on the bank of a good-sized stream. The saw-mill had not been used for nine years and the timber was gradually coming ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer

... little improvement towards picturesque beauty. Now and then, to be sure, they came to woods of birch or fir, but the trees were small and widely scattered; still the chief feature was a dead flat covered with scrub. ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... open plains surrounding the mesa rim (6,000 feet above the sea), are seen broad stretches of dusty sage brush and prickly greasewood. Where the plain rises toward the base of the mesa a scattered growth of scrub cedar and pinon begins to appear. But little of this latter growth is seen in the immediate vicinity of the villages; it is, however, the characteristic vegetation of the mesas, while, in still higher altitudes, toward the San Juan, open forests of timber are met with. This latter country ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... all was scrub forest in 1837, are a little street, a house of some pretension occupied by Mr. Laughton, the enterprising owner of the Beaver steamboat, plying on Lake Simcoe, and ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... road now ran between two interminable forests of brush, which covered the whole side of the mountain like a garment. This was the "Maquis," composed of scrub oak, juniper, arbutus, mastic, privet, gorse, laurel, myrtle and boxwood, intertwined with clematis, huge ferns, honeysuckle, cytisus, rosemary, lavender and brambles, which covered the sides of the mountain with ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... sleep—that's the only thing when you're as miserable as poor Nelly. You know it is, Will. Don't you remember that poor Mrs. Henessy whose son died here? Her letters to me afterwards used to be all about scrubbing. If she could scrub from morning till night, she could just get along. She scrubbed herself sane again. The bigger the floor, the better she liked it. When bedtime came, she just slept like a log. And at last she got all right. But it was ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... have known it all these years ... 185 (When the young man was flaming out his thoughts Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see, Too lifted up in heart because of it) "Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, 190 Who, were he set to plan and execute As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!" To Rafael's!—And indeed the arm is wrong. I hardly dare ... yet, only you to see, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... the getting up. The operation of dressing begins. I slip on my dressing-gown, turn up my sleeves, and don the mackintosh apron; with Mary's assistance, I wash and scrub my two little blossoms. I am sole arbiter of the temperature of the bath, for a good half of children's crying and whimpering comes from mistakes here. The moment has arrived for paper fleets and glass ducks, since the only way to get children thoroughly washed is to ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... for outside of a mine there is no kind of labor more arduous or exacting. The land cleared is that from which the original forest has been cut, leaving stumps thickly scattered over the surface, from which a heavy scrub-growth springs up. Active, quick, and industrious as the negroes may be in the tobacco-, corn-, or wheat fields, they show here great indolence, and move forward very slowly with their hoes, axes, and picks, piling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... upon as a great undertaking, although the labour has been much lessened by the introduction of iron axes, which have completely superseded those of stone formerly in use. A tree of sufficient size free from limbs—usually a species of Bombax (silk-cotton tree) or Erythrina—is selected in the scrub, cut down, hollowed out where it falls, and dragged to the beach by means of long climbers used as ropes. The remaining requisites are now added; two stout poles, fourteen to twenty feet in length, are laid across the gunwale, and secured there from six to ten feet apart, and ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... scrubbed, so Woot shrank away from the energetic girl, trembling fearfully. But Jinjur grabbed him by his paw and dragged him out to the back yard, where, in spite of his whines and struggles, she plunged him into a tub of cold water and began to scrub him with a stiff brush and ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... unable to open the bakery. A small man with a white moustache, who chewed tobacco, came from the mill and took the unused flour and shipped it away. The boy and his mother continued living above the bakery store room. Again she went in the morning to wash the windows and scrub the floors in the offices of the mine and her red-haired son stood upon the street or sat in the pool room and talked to the black- haired boy. "Next week I'll be going to the city and will begin making something of myself," he said. ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson

... which was genuinely their own discovery, should not have been in a more interesting region than was actually the case; for the true "Terre Napoleon" is no better for the most part than a sterile waste, with a back country of sand, swamp, and mallee scrub, populated principally by rabbits, dingoes, ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... relief. Hourly they expected it, but, being hampered by a score of wounded, it was not possible for them to break through the thickly populated scrub unassisted. And they had ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... Aubrey may get some shooting out of George Rivers." After such good-nature my mouth is shut, though, ay di me, all the world and his wife are coming here on Monday evening, and unless I borrow of Blanche, Mrs. Ernescliffe's sister will "look like ane scrub."' ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... unfolded it he recognized the scent of a cologne Enid often used. For some reason this attention unmanned him. He felt the smart of tears in his eyes, and to hide them bent over the metal basin and began to scrub his face. Enid stood behind him, adjusting her hat in ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... the rim and laying a solid pyramid of violets in the centre. The mold, through which I was floundering, seemed to merge into a bog; but the lower reaches were hidden by a thicket of alder bushes and scrub willows. I mounted a fallen tree and tried to get cautiously down to some tempting lily-pads. Evidently some one else on the other side of the brush was after those same bulbs; for I heard the sucking sound of steps plunging through the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... with the Professor, who appeared to be in a state of joy bordering upon hysteria, while Holman and I in the rear tried to assist the two girls over the roughest sections of the road. I thought as we scrambled through impenetrable scrub and crawled over rocky piles that it was the strangest expedition that had ever set forth. If Leith was the wicked devil that we suspected him to be, four persons were risking their lives to gratify the whim of a half-crazy scientist who was dying for notoriety. He ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... fellow would scrub away energetically at the floor, deluged with water, and fix up things straight for me; making the place far more neat and tidy in five minutes than Harry the mulatto could have done if he had been all day over the job. He eclipsed the steward in his own ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... borne in upon me lately while staying in the village of Hindon in the neighbourhood of the Great Ridge Wood, which clothes the summit of the long high down overlooking the vale of the Wylye. It is an immense wood, mostly of scrub or dwarf oak, very dense in some parts, in others thin, with open, barren patches, and like a wild forest, covering altogether twelve or fourteen square miles—perhaps more. There are no houses near, and no people in it except a few gamekeepers: I spent long days in it without meeting a human ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... story, but he don't broadcast none." Topping a swell of the meadow lands another stream basin was encountered. "Hit's a little Ranty," explained Landy. "That's a dam downstream aways en the B-line waters a couple o' hundred acres." In these meadows there were cattle—cows and calves and some scrub yearlings. Crossing the Ranty, the horsemen mounted to the levels again. Here, there were fences. Farther on, stables, sheds, and a cluster of houses. The ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... he spoke of his shame in being supported by his mother, she leaned her cheek on his shoulder, careless of the three spectators on the porch, and said softly, "David, I love you so that I would like to scrub floors for you." He laughed; "I wouldn't like to have you scrub floors, thank you! Why in thunder don't I get ahead faster," he sighed. Then he told her that the older men in the profession were "so darned mean, even the big fellows, 'way up," that they kept on practising when they could just ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... fall of the Confederacy left the slaves free and completed the ruin of the Dudley estate. Part of the land went, at ruinous prices, to meet mortgages at ruinous rates; part lay fallow, given up to scrub oak and short-leaf pine; merely enough was cultivated, or let out on shares to Negro tenants, to provide a living for old Malcolm and a few servants. Absorbed in dreams of the hidden gold and in the search for it, he neglected his business and fell yet deeper into debt. He worried himself into ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... his woe drops out of sight. He's managed to keep hold of a little property that brings him in just enough to scrub along on, and he joins that hungry-eyed, trembly-fingered fringe of margin pikers that hangs around every hotel broker's branch in town, takin' a timid flier now and then, but tappin' the free lunch hard and reg'lar. ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... o'clock, while making his way through the scrub pine and cedar brush in the mountains, Major Chivington and his command heard cannonading to their right, and were thereby apprised that Colonel Slough and his men had met the enemy. About twelve o'clock he arrived with his men on the summit of ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... one whuppin' dat I got, an' I needed hit too. Missus Pitts sont me out in de yard ter scrub de wilverware [TR: silverware] wid some san'. I knowed dat I wuz supposed to scrub hit good an' den wash it all off, but 'stid of dat I leaves hit layin' dar in de yard wid de dirt on it. She whups me fur it, but she jist stings my laigs wid a ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... timber-cutters about to go for a month's sojourn in the woods needed a cook, so Hughes became their potslinger. Frail as he was, he seemed to thrive on hardship. In succession he became sheep shearer, railway labourer, boundary rider, stock runner, scrub-cleaner, coastal sailor, dishwasher in a bush hotel, itinerant umbrella-mender ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... went, and, when day broke, they were once more in the scrub pines and cedars, with a cold wind blowing and nipping at their ears and noses. But Boyd, who went far back on the trail, could discover no sign of Felton's band, and they concluded ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... was mortally wounded by my side, as we were riding, unconscious of our danger, through an opening out of our skirmishers in a momentary loss of direction. There were extensive thickets of the loblolly pine occasionally met, where these scrub trees were so thick and their branches so interlaced that neither man nor horse could force a way through them, and the movement would be delayed till these densest places were turned by marching around them. The connection would then be made again, the direction of the skirmishers rectified, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... opprobrious term; "such a b— as your mother, you dog! D— you, I've a good mind to box your jaws instead of your comepiss. I'll let you know, as how I am meat for your master, you saucy blackguard. You are worse than a dog, you old flinty-faced, flea-bitten scrub. A dog wears his own coat, but you wear ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... hills east of Rio Paraguay; Gran Chaco region west of Rio Paraguay mostly low, marshy plain near the river, and dry forest and thorny scrub elsewhere ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... emphatically, breaking in. "With modern industrial conditions hung on a hair trigger as they are, it's as though a boy had exploded a fire-cracker in the works of a watch. That means his whole fortune gone. Old Peter put everything into coal. Austin will not have a cent—nothing but those Vermont scrub forests of his. What a mad thing to do! But it's been growing on him for a long time. I've seen—I've ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... Scrub and wash as many carrots as are required. Cook them in a little water or steam them until quite tender, then slice them and place them in a saucepan. Make a white sauce as directed in the recipe for "Onions and white sauce," ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson

... not returned from their tour of the trenches. Headquarters were situated in Gully Ravine, that prince among ravines on the Peninsula. From my place I could see the gully floor, which was the dry bed of a water-course, winding away between high walls of perpendicular cliffs or steep, scrub-covered slopes, as it pursued its journey, like some colossal trench, towards the firing line. Down the great cleft, while I looked, a horseman came riding rapidly. He was an officer, with a slight open wound in his chin, and he rode ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... says I shall have no chance of entering it again until the time of his sister Kanau's wedding, the week after Christmas. Father has consented that I shall remain to witness the great event. Every Saturday Aunt Poot and her fat Kate go into that parlor and sweep and polish and scrub; then it is darkened and closed until Saturday comes again; not a soul enters it in the meantime; but the schoonmaken, as she calls it, must be ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... abandoned position and again fortify the hill. In some respects this hill, which was about one hundred and fifty feet in height, made a strong and easily defended position; but, unfortunately, it was covered nearly to the summit with a dense growth of bushes and scrub, and was commanded by a range of higher hills a little farther to the eastward. The enemy, therefore, could not only creep close up to the camp under cover of the dense chaparral, but could fire down upon it from the higher slopes of the wooded range which ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... off when Finn emerged, with heaving flank and lolling tongue, into the green but stony glade which formed the ridge and crest of the Tinnaburra range. The last hundred yards of his progress had been a good deal of a scramble, through thick scrub and over lichen-covered boulders, on a very steep rise. And now that he had reached the cool glade of topmost Tinnaburra, he found that his arrival had caused considerable perturbation among a small mob of brumbies, or wild horses, consisting of some seven ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... must have passed before I knew anything at all, either of the nature of this awful accident or of the good luck which attended my leap. Lying there on my back, I became conscious presently that I was in a thick scrub of gorse, which lined the road hereabouts. It had caught me just as a spider's web catches a fly. I ached intolerably, that is true—my whole body seemed numbed, as though it had been hit with irons, while my leather clothes were torn to rags. ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton

... room. And very often these children were not ill for a little time only, as any of you might be, but ill always from babyhood, without any hope of getting well. To take one case, little Beatrice Annie Jones had a mother who was a widow, and used to go out to scrub people's floors and clean the houses; that is what is called being a charwoman. She had sometimes to go quite a long way to her work, and could not come back in the middle of the day for dinner; so in the morning before she went she used to give Beatrice Annie a bit of bread and ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... cedars, shadow-flecked paths under the scrub oak, meadows where water glimmered, white sails off Center Island and Cooper's Bluff—Cooper's Bluff from the north, northeast, east, southeast, south—this they painted with never-tiring, Pecksniffian patience, boxing the compass around ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... sharply away from the river, revealing a scrub of low bush decorated with a collection of white garments, evidently set out to dry. His horse shied at the unusual sight, and furthermore took exception to the raucous sound of a man's voice chanting a dismal ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... spread a linen sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited for the tub to fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I pondered over the possibilities involved in a German "Warm-bad." Perhaps Marie will attempt to scrub me! Never! At last she goes. I remove my collar. Suddenly Marie returns: it is to bring another towel. There is no lock on the door—nothing with which to defend one's self. I bathe in peace, however. On emerging I examine the pile ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... guess so—on the installment plan. It takes her a week to scrub up the kitchen, and then one end of it is so dirty she has to begin again. Consequently the dust is so thick in the rest of the house that I can see my tracks. If 'twan't so late in the season I'd plant garden stuff ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... matter?" inquired Jack, coming up, while he endeavoured to scrub his long hair dry with a towel ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... his head, and sitting down on a projecting root of a scrub oak, produced from the depths of his capacious pocket a bit of tin, which he carefully selected from among a miscellaneous hoard of treasures. "Here." said he, holding it up to the view as he spoke; "here is the slide of an old powder-flask, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... on deck when Tomas Castro had started out of his doze. I wanted to see. We went round violently as I emerged, and, clinging to the side, I saw, in a whirl, tall, baked, brown hills dropping sheer down to a strip of flat land and a belt of dark-green scrub at the water's edge; little pink squares of house-walls dropped here and there, mounting the hillside among palms, like men standing in tall grass, running back, hiding in a steep valley; silver-gray huts with ragged ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... stained, and require any scrubbing, remember that to wash or scrub wood you must follow the grain, as rubbing across it rubs the dirt in ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... latter studiously avoided looking at Mr Roper, by shifting round and round the trunk like an iguana. The woman also kept her face averted." A day or two afterwards, Mr Gilbert and Charley met some more natives. "Two gins were so horror-struck at the unwonted sight, that they immediately fled into the scrub; the men commenced talking to them, but occasionally interrupted their speeches by spitting and uttering a noise like pooh! pooh! apparently expressive of their disgust." Meetings with the natives now ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... but Washington filled it up with trees, stumps, stones, old rails, brush and dirt, so that scarcely a trace of it was left. In places one comes upon old fields that have been allowed to revert to broom sedge, scrub oak and scrub pine. One is astonished at the amount that has never been cleared at all. Only by the most careful husbandry could such an estate be kept productive. It never could be ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... all his soul for the woman he loves? That's my ideal: what's yours, and that of all the dreadful people who live in these hideous rows of houses? Sermons and scrubbing brushes! With you to preach the sermon and your wife to scrub. ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw

... sprawled aft, and at a nearer sight of him some of the men broke out into nervous titters. There was some excuse, for surely such a scarecrow had never before been the sport of wind and wave. A thing of shreds he was, elaborately ragged, a face overrun with a scrub of beard, and preternaturally drawn, surmounted by a stiff-dried, dirty, cloth semi-turban, with a wide, forbidding stain along the side, worked out the likeness ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Zealand Colonists call their forest "bush." What in England might be called bush or brushwood is called "scrub" ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... I shall scrub them so each day till the holy night! Even now Ninette is white as milk, and Beppo shines like an angel! Ah, but I shall be proud when he rides up to the altar in his little cart! And, mother, dost thou not ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... get the land until they made some arrangements in regard to those nut trees. The engineer that designed that hospital must have had some sense, because they are building a canopy around one of the trees adjacent to that hospital, and have arranged to cut only one scrub oak. The other trees will be mentioned in the deed with restrictive covenants to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... one day to Eleusis; on another day to Tatoi, buried in oak-woods on the slope of Parnes; on another through noisy and mongrel Piraeus, and over undulating wrinkled ground, burnt up by the sun and covered with low scrub and bushes of myrtle, to the shore of the gulf opposite to Salamis; on yet another to Marathon, where they lunched on the famous mound beneath which the bodies of the Athenians who fell in the battle were ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... O'Malligan,—the last of the O'Malligans being now in trousers,—and hung over the side with every mark of approving interest. And happy with something to love and an object to work for, Mary continued to scrub on with a heart strangely light. "And I couldn't slight the corners if I wanted to," she told her neighbors, "with them great solemn eyes a-watchin' ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... that it was again chased, the raccoon at first took shelter in a dense thicket of scrub oak, which formed in places a tangled undergrowth. Tiger quickly followed up its trail, and it was ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... keeping touch with the 1st Battalion on their left, and had gone nearly a mile before they were checked by machine-gun fire ahead of them. Half-way from their starting point to Regnicourt stood a little group of houses at the top of a small hill, and from here, as well as from the thick scrub and undergrowth which covered the country on both sides, the enemy's machine gunners had a good target. Thinking that this was probably some small post left behind by the Boche as he retired, and knowing that the cyclists had been through the previous night, Lieut. ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... ground was slippery, making a most treacherous footing. One of the pack animals just ahead of my horse slipped, fell to his knees, the heavy pack overbalanced him, and away he rolled over and over down the slope, to be stopped from the precipice only by the happy accident of a scrub tree in the way. Frightened by this sight, my animal plunged, and he, too, lost his footing. Had I been riding side-saddle, nothing could have saved me, for the downhill was on the near side; but instead I swung ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... not stand the fresh allegation; and, while my mother looked very grave, we laughed, as Scrub says, "consumedly." My father muttered something about "cursed nonsense!" but I am inclined to think that aunt Catharine's colic charge was not ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... and its sacred books like the impositions of Chinese, Indian, or Mohammedan impostors. They, too, are religious, and have their sacred books, which they believe to be divine." A profound generalization indeed! Is a peach-tree just like a horse-chestnut, or a scrub-oak, or a honey-locust? They are all trees, and have leaves on them. The Bible is just as like the Yi King, or the Vedas, or the Koran, as a Christian American is like a Chinaman, a Turk, or a Hindoo. But ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Yard man. All you have to do is wash windows, and sweep de sidewalk, and scrub off de steps and porch and hoe up de weeds and rake up de leaves and dig a few holes now and then with a spade—to plant some trees and things like that. It's a good ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston

... mother's drawingroom for a week—not that he minded that much . . . Aunt Helen was a pretty woman. Gertrude and I never could think why she married Uncle Andrew, but I believe they got on all right, though she was a big handsome woman—a Clowes all over—while old Andrew looked like any little scrub out of Houndsditch. Never can tell why people marry each other, can you?" Bernard was becoming philosophical. I suppose if you go to the bottom it's Nature that takes them by the scruff of the neck and gives them a gentle shove and says 'More babies, please.' She doesn't ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... to scrub the stable," said Vrouw Vedder. "It is getting too cold for the cows to stay all night in the pastures. Father means to bring Mevrouw Holstein in to-night, and I want her stable to be nice and ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... the battle had surged beyond her. Shots and hoarse cries arose from the scrub beyond the storehouse, while all about her, in the trampled snow, wounded men cursed and prayed, and dead men froze in the slush of their own heart's blood. The girl followed into the scrub, and to her surprise came face to face ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... the men stood upright, to clear the way to freedom. But, as they parted the nearest branches, a number of arms were suddenly forced through the scrub; a number of hands gripped them with irresistible strength; and before they could realise what had happened they were rudely dragged up the bank of ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... comrades contemptuous surnames, but their great people also. They didn't call you the matchless Hurler, because by doing so they would have paid you a compliment, but Hull over the head Jack, as much as to say that after all you were a scrub: so, in ancient time, instead of calling Regner the great conqueror, the Nation Tamer, they surnamed him Lodbrog, which signifies Rough or Hairy Breeks—lod or loddin signifying rough or hairy; and instead of complimenting Halgerdr, the wife of Gunnar of Hlitharend, the great champion of Iceland, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... last box was done. Machines became mute, wheels were stilled, and the long black belts sagged into limp folds. Every girl seized a broom or a scrub-pail, and hilarity reigned supreme while we swept and scrubbed for the next half-hour, Angelina and her chorus singing all the while endless ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... over while that awful battery covered the ford. Oh! how I wish a part of them at least had managed to get across. Look, Rod, as I live, one lone Frenchman did succeed in crossing. You can see him crawling along in the scrub there, his red breeches betraying his every movement. Just a single one of all that brave lot, and he'll be either killed right away or made a prisoner, like ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... so desp'rate she rowed ashore all by herself. Accordin' to her description, that must have been a perfectly punk little island. It was all rock, except in a few spots where there was some scrub bushes and mangy grass. Plunk in the middle was an old shack of a house surrounded by lobster pots and racks of codfish spread out to dry, and she says it was the smelliest scenery she'd ever got real ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... somewhat to her surprise, that she had to begin her nurse's life as a sort of maid-of-all-work; she had to scrub floors, to clean grates, to polish handles—it seemed to her that she never had a moment to herself from morning till night. Her feet felt very sore, her back ached. Once or twice she felt so dreadfully ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade

... awhile down at the Casualty Clearing Station and had his leg fixed up; it wasn't bad. After he had been there awhile the Sergeant asked him to wash the floor; Mac refused, "Do you think I came out here to scrub floors?" says he; "I'm a fighting man." The Sergeant was going to have him pinched, but while he was away Mac sneaked out and came back to the battalion, absolutely refusing to go back, and Colonel Embury, our Colonel, who ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien

... good ventilation, because fasters not only need a lot of fresh air; their bodies give off powerfully offensive odors. 2. Sun bathe if possible in warm climates for 10 to 20 minutes in the morning before the sun gets too strong. 3. Scrub/massage the skin with a dry brush, stroking toward the heart, followed by a warm water shower two to four times a day to assist the skin in eliminating toxins. If you are too weak to do this, have an assisted ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... placed in a tub of warm water, about waist deep, where a convict scrubbed me with a large, rough, horse brush and soap; while a hang-dog looking scoundrel, and the deputy-warden Dean, urged the convict to 'scrub the d—d horse-thief,' and indulged in various demoniacal grins and gesticulations of exultation at my sufferings and embarrassment." The Major describes "his feelings," in the strong language ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... your pictures in the air, or aesthetisches Zeug (as Mullner's wife called it, Mullner of the Midnight Blade): nay, I cannot get up the steam on any such best; it is extremely irksome as well as fruitless at present. In the next Westminster Review, therefore, if you see a small scrub of a paper signed "S.P." on one Varnhagen a German, say that it is by "Simon Pure," or by "Scissars and Paste," or even by "Soaped Pig"—whom no man shall catch! Truly it is a secret which you must not mention: I was driven to it by ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... to the spot which Bill Harney had in mind—a grand and wild place, where the mountain appeared to split in two for a distance of several hundred feet. Here there was a gorge fifty or sixty feet deep, partly choked with small scrub cedars. ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield

... through Capetown and its interminable suburbs, came out on to open rolling country, mostly covered with green scrub, and, in the afternoon, formed our first regular marching camp, on a bit of green sward, which was a delicious contrast after Green Point Sand. Guns and waggons were marshalled, picket-ropes stretched ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... that I had it in me to become so fond of baseball as I seem to be doing right now," he told them. "Of course I played a little at several kinds of games like cricket, and since coming here to Scranton I've been knocking flies for some of the boys, and playing in scrub games. But now I enjoy it ever so much, though, of course, I don't dream that I'll have the good luck to be selected for the team, when there are so many who know more about the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... furor would have set in, and many mammas and little children would have dreamed of confluent smallpox for weeks to come. But we did none of these things in the Philippines. We merely requested the authorities to remove the smallpox patient, and ordered the janitor to scrub the room with soap and water. Nobody quitted school; nobody got the smallpox; and the whole ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... village—men running out of the houses with guns and swords, and women and children running, too, poor things! sick with fear. They fired at us from the village fence, but had no time to close the gate ere our sowars were in. Then they escaped in various ways to the forest and scrub, running like madmen across the little bit of open, and firing at us directly they reached shelter where the cavalry could not come. Of course, in the open they had no chance, but in the dense forest they were safe enough. The village was soon cleared, ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... Carroway, most fidgety of women, and born of a well-shorn family, was unhappy from the middle to the end of the week that she could not scrub her husband's beard off. The lady's sense of human crime, and of everything hateful in creation, expressed itself mainly in the word "dirt." Her rancor against that nobly tranquil and most natural ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... rising row on row to the roof. At such moments I have experienced the creative joy of a mighty orator or a sublime actor; I have actually felt my pulses leap. And then the entrance of a stage-hand or a scrub-woman ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton



Words linked to "Scrub" :   cleanup, flora, botany, cleaning, lave, rub, scrubber, cleansing, scrub oak, unimproved, wash, vegetation, schedule, mopping, swabbing, holystone



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