scurvy

Noun usage possibly from the adjective scurvy influenced by or a variant of scurfy. Took on meaning of Dutch scheurbuik, French scorbut (“scurvy”), possibly from Old Norse skyrbjúgr, skyr (“sour milk”) + bjúgr (“swelling, tumour”) whence the Icelandic skyrbjúgur (“scurvy”). Compare German Scharbock, Late Latin scorbutus. Alternatively from Middle Dutch, from Middle Low German.

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)vi

scurvy (usually uncountable, plural scurvies)

1. (medicine) A disease caused by insufficient intake of vitamin C leading to the formation of livid spots on the skin, spongy gums, loosening of the teeth and bleeding into the skin and from almost all mucous membranes.
   • 2012 March 1, William E. Carter, Merri Sue Carter, “The British Longitude Act Reconsidered”, in American Scientist‎, volume 100, number 2, page 87:

     Conditions were horrendous aboard most British naval vessels at the time. Scurvy and other diseases ran rampant, killing more seamen each year than all other causes combined, including combat.

• (vitamin C deficiency disease): Barlow's disease, Cheadle-Möller-Barlow syndrome, Cheadle's disease, land scurvy, Moeller's disease, Möller-Barlow disease, scorbutus

• scurvy grass

• -scorbic
• scorbic
• ascorbic
• scorbutic

scurvy (comparative scurvier, superlative scurviest)

1. Covered or affected with scurf or scabs; scabby; scurfy; specifically, diseased with the scurvy.
   • Bible, Leviticus xxi. 18, 20

     whatsoever man […] be scurvy or scabbed

2. Contemptible, despicable, low, disgustingly mean.

   a scurvy trick; a scurvy knave

   • c. 1610-11, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act III scene ii:

     What a pied ninny's this! Thou scurvy patch!

   • Jonathan Swift

     […] that scurvy custom of taking tobacco

• scurvily
• scurviness

• morphew

• scurvy in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• “scurvy” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.
• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.
• Who Named It? last accessed 28-Mar-2007