Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

scat

/skæt/ noun, verb, interjection

Forms scats scatting scatted scatt skatt skat

  1. noun A tax; tribute.
  2. noun (Shetland) A land-tax paid in the Shetland Islands.
  3. noun (biology) Animal excrement; droppings, dung.
  4. noun (slang) Heroin.
  5. noun (slang, obsolete) Whiskey.
  6. noun (slang, pornography) Coprophilia, scatophilia.
  7. noun (uncommon) A blow; a hit, an impact.
  8. noun (UK, dialect) A brisk shower of rain, driven by the wind.
  9. noun (music, jazz) Scat singing.
  10. verb (music, jazz) To sing an improvised melodic solo using nonsense syllables, often onomatopoeic or imitative of musical instruments.
  11. verb (colloquial) To leave quickly. “Here comes the principal; we'd better scat.”
  12. interjection (colloquial) An imperative demand to leave, often understood by speaker and listener as impertinent. “Scat! Go on! Get out of here!”
  13. noun Any fish in the family Scatophagidae.

Synonyms

feces shit storm scag scat singing run scarper turn tail lam run away hightail it bunk head for the hills take to the woods escape fly the coop break away

Etymology

From 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”).
Cognate with Scots scat (“tax, levy, charge, payment, bribe”), West Frisian skat (“treasure, darling”), Dutch schat (“treasure, hoard, darling, sweetheart”), German Schatz (“treasure, hoard, wealth, store, darling, sweetheart”), Swedish skatt (“treasure, tax, duty”), Icelandic skattur (“tax, tribute”), Latin scateō (“gush, team, bubble forth, abound”).

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.

Webster’s 1913

  1. interjection Go away; begone; away; --chiefly used in driving off a cat.
  2. noun Tribute. [R.] "Seizing scatt and treasure." Longfellow.
  3. noun A shower of rain. [Prov. Eng.] Wright.

Etymology [Icel. scattr.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “scat”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details