scoff

«scoff» in Mova's school dictionary: to laugh at it or talk about it in a mocking way, as if… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (scoff, scoffs, scoffed, scoffing); noun (scoff — UK slang, food)

meaning for a pupil

1) To scoff at someone or something is to laugh at it or talk about it in a mocking way, as if it were silly. tree →

2) (UK, Australia, informal) To scoff food is to eat it very quickly and greedily. tree →

3) (UK slang) Scoff is food. tree →

sense in the lessons

In stories, people scoff at the inventor's idea, but later it works. In everyday British and Australian talk, «Who scoffed all the biscuits?» means who ate them all. It tells the reader someone is being rude or greedy. Phrases: scoff at, scoff down, scoff the lot.

examples

• Everyone scoffed at his idea of a flying bike. tree →
• My brother scoffed all the chips before I got any. (UK, informal) tree →
• Don't scoff your dinner — eat slowly. tree →
• She scoffed when I said I'd seen a ghost. tree →
• The dog scoffed the sausages off the plate. tree →
• People scoffed, but the Wright brothers did fly. tree →
• Let's get some scoff before the film. (UK slang) tree →
• Then the Prince stood on the beach, and in the pride of his strength he scoffed and said: tree →

note

Regular verb: scoffed, scoffing. «Scoff at» (mock) is followed by «at»; the eating sense is informal. In maths, «he scoffed 3 of the 12 biscuits» means subtract: 9 are left.

In the corpora

• They scoff, and in wickedness utter oppression; they speak as if there were none on high.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «scoff» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.