scat
A tax; tributeA tax; tribute.
Recorded: Commander Keane, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
» Sasha is known for her musicality and her ability to improvise or “scat.”
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2 languagesExamples
4 sentencesSasha is known for her musicality and her ability to improvise or “scat.”
Tom became concerned about Mary's scat fetish.
Louis Armstrong was a well-known exponent of scat singing.
Meaning
10 senses(countable, uncountable)Animal excrement; droppings, dung.
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.
A tax; tribute.
(Shetland)A land-tax paid in the Shetland Islands.
More meanings 7
Scat singing.
Any fish in the family Scatophagidae.
(countable, slang, uncountable)Heroin.
(countable, obsolete, slang, uncountable)Whiskey.
(countable, slang, uncountable)Coprophilia, scatophilia.
копроkopro
(uncommon)A blow; a hit, an impact.
(UK, dialectal)A brisk shower of rain, driven by the wind.
- singing jazz; the singer substitutes nonsense syllables for the words of the song and tries to sound like a musical instrument
Origin
From Middle English scet, schat, from Old English sċeatt (“property, goods”) and Old NorseFrom Middle English scet, schat, from Old English sċeatt (“property, goods”) and Old Norse skattr (“wealth, treaure”); both from Proto-Germanic *skattaz (“cattle, kine, wealth”), from Proto-Indo-European *skatn-, *skat- (“to jump, skip, splash out”).
Origin uncertain. Both the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster 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. Perhaps from English dialectal scat (“to scatter, fling, bespatter”), or an alteration of shit, which is also used for "drugs, heroin".
Uncertain. The OED, which connects the senses "blow" and "shower" only tentatively, suggests that at least the former might be onomatopoeia. Dialectally, the word can also refer to "a spell" of any kind of weather, e.g. "a scat of fine weather", "a scat of frost".
1920s, probably imitative.
From the taxonomic name of the family.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
plural: scatsSynonyms
3 synonyms- singing jazz; the singer substitutes nonsense syllables for the words of the song and tries to sound like a musical instrument:scat singing
Word family
8 related wordsSee also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.