Scramble. A rough and tumble fight.
1794. It is said we are like the Frenchman, who in a scrabble swore he would have another hem to his shirt, and in the very scrabble lost his shirt.—Gazette of the U.S., Phila., Feb. 21.
1822. [The boy] scrabbled up in a rage, and fell upon his brother with his fist and teeth.—Mass. Spy, Nov. 27.
1825. I was a little a-head, scrabblin’ over some rotten logs.—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ i. 111.
1830. Elder Hall is a Democratic Republikan, and there was a great deal tougher scrabble to elect him than there was to choose the Speaker of the House.—Seba Smith (‘Major Downing’), ‘My Thirty Years Out of the Senate,’ p. 65 (1860).
