scratch
verb (used with object)
to break, mar, or mark the surface of by rubbing, scraping, or tearing with something sharp or rough.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The ghost-written work is a fast-paced, quickfire account, looking out from the inside, always scratchily aware of the bodyguards outside the door and the cameras waiting to catch him.
From BBC ● Jan. 10, 2023
Jon Bon Jovi scratchily sang the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” with a band on a pier in Miami.
From New York Times ● Jan. 21, 2021
By the time she was nine, she had read “Middlemarch” and most of Dickens; she learned the violin and played it scratchily but at a tremendous pace, advancing through all the grades.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 10, 2018
Here he started scratchily, but by the end seemed to have become weirdly ubiquitous, a gristly substance spread across the whole of that Leicester backline.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 14, 2017
One dined scratchily off luke-warm silver, one's breakfast cup was Crown Derby set in filigree.
From The Oyster by Peer
