scuffle

«scuffle» in Mova's school dictionary: a short, confused fight with pushing and grabbing… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a scuffle, scuffles); verb (scuffle, scuffles, scuffled, scuffling)

meaning for a pupil

1) A scuffle is a short, confused fight with pushing and grabbing, usually not very serious. tree →

2) To scuffle means to fight in this way. tree →

3) To scuffle (along) means to walk dragging your feet, or to make a scraping noise. tree →

sense in the lessons

Used in news, school incident reports and stories about fights in the playground or at football matches. It tells the reader the fight was short and messy, not a big battle. Phrases: «a scuffle broke out», «a brief scuffle», «be involved in a scuffle», «scuffle with».

examples

• A scuffle broke out in the lunch queue. tree →
• Two boys scuffled over a football. tree →
• There was a brief scuffle, but no one was hurt. tree →
• Police broke up a scuffle outside the stadium. tree →
• We heard something scuffling in the attic. tree →
• He scuffled along in his slippers. tree →
• The teacher stepped in before the scuffle got worse. tree →
• Then a great scuffling of feet was heard, and in a few minutes the hall was clear. tree →

note

Countable noun; verb scuffled, scuffling. Close words: scrap, tussle, altercation (formal), brawl (bigger and wilder). Not the same as «shuffle» (walk slowly dragging feet, or mix cards), although they sound alike.

In the corpora

• At break Maddie and Jake both got into the same scuffle over the football.
• Then came the scuffle.

Trees and pragmatics

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