scarf

• (UK) IPA^(key): /skɑːf/
• (US) IPA^(key): /skɑːɹf/
• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)f

Probably from Old Northern French escarpe (compare Old French escharpe (“pilgrim's purse suspended from the neck”)). The verb is derived from the noun.

scarf (plural scarves or scarfs)

1. A long, often knitted, garment worn around the neck.
   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 2, in The China Governess‎:

     Now that she had rested and had fed from the luncheon tray Mrs. Broome had just removed, she had reverted to her normal gaiety.  She looked cool in a grey tailored cotton dress with a terracotta scarf and shoes and her hair a black silk helmet.

2. A headscarf.
3. (dated) A neckcloth or cravat.

• infinity scarf
• Möbius scarf

• → Welsh: sgarff

scarf (third-person singular simple present scarfs, present participle scarfing, simple past and past participle scarfed)

1. To throw on loosely; to put on like a scarf.
   • 1599-1601, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2:

     My sea-gown scarfed about me.

2. To dress with a scarf, or as with a scarf; to cover with a loose wrapping.

A scarf joint

Sewing machine needles with scarf shown on right

Of uncertain origin. Possibly from Old Norse skarfr, derivative of skera (“to cut”).

scarf (plural scarfs)

1. A type of joint in woodworking.
2. A groove on one side of a sewing machine needle.
3. A dip or notch or cut made in the trunk of a tree to direct its fall when felling.

• muffler

scarf (third-person singular simple present scarfs, present participle scarfing, simple past and past participle scarfed)

1. To shape by grinding.
2. To form a scarf on the end or edge of, as for a joint in timber, forming a "V" groove for welding adjacent metal plates, metal rods, etc.
3. To unite, as two pieces of timber or metal, by a scarf joint.

Generally thought to be a variant, attested since the 1950s, of scoff (“eat (quickly)”) (of which scorf is another attested variant), itself a variant of scaff.[1][2] Sometimes alternatively suggested to be a dialectal survival of Old English scearfian, sceorfan (“gnaw, bite”) (compare scurf).[3]

scarf (third-person singular simple present scarfs, present participle scarfing, simple past and past participle scarfed)

1. (transitive, US, slang) To eat very quickly.

   You sure scarfed that pizza.

The more usual form in the UK is scoff.

• scarf down

scarf

1. (Scotland) A cormorant.

• scarf in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• fracs

• scarph

From Proto-Germanic *skarpaz, whence also Old Saxon skarp, Old English scearp, Old Norse skarpr. Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kerb-, from *(s)ker- (“to cut”).

scarf

1. sharp

• Middle High German: scharpf
  • Alemannic German: scharpf
  • Bavarian: scharf
  • Central Franconian: schärp, scharp
  • German: scharf
  • Hunsrik: schaaref
  • Luxembourgish: schaarf
  • Yiddish: שאַרף‎ (sharf)