▪ I. scrog, n. Chiefly Sc. and north.
(skrɒg)
Forms: 4 skrogg, 5 scroge, 7 skrog, 6– scrog(g.
[App. related to scrag n.2; cf. shrog.]
1. A stunted bush; usually pl., brushwood, underwood.
| a 1400 Morte Arth. 1641 Discoueres now sekerly skrogges and other, That no skathelle in the skroggez skorne vs here⁓aftyre. 1483 Cath. Angl. 326/1 A Scroge; vbi A buske. 1513 Douglas æneis ix. Prol. 37 Full litill it wald delite To write of scroggis, broym, haddir, or rammale. 1615 W. Lawson Country Housew. Gard. (1626) 32 What an infinite number of bushes, shrubs, and skrogs of hazels, thornes, and other profitable wood. 1719 Ramsay 3rd Answ. to Hamilton 18 Yet sometimes leave the Riggs and Bog, Your Howms, and Braes and shady Scrog. 1820 Blackw. Mag. VI. 568, I have gathered nuts from the scrogs of Tynron. 1893 Stevenson Catriona xi, In a bit scrog of a wood by east of Silvermills. |
b. Her. A branch of a tree: a blazon sometimes used by Scottish heralds.
| 1780 Edmondson Her. Gloss., Scrogs, the term used by the Scots in blazoning a small branch of a tree. 1828–40 Berry Encycl. Herald. II, Scrogie, or Scroggie, az. a chev. or, betw. two scrogs, or starved branches, in chief, and a man's heart in base, ar. 1868 Cussans Heraldry vi. (1893) 104 Amongst Scotch Heralds a Branch is termed a Scrog. |
2. a. The blackthorn. b. The crab-apple tree.
| 1691 Ray N.C. Words 61 Scrogs; Blackthorn. 1853 [see 3]. |
3. attrib., as scrog-apple, scrog-branch, scrog-bush, scrog-tree.
| 1853 G. Johnston Bot. E. Bord. 79 Pyrus Malus..Crab⁓apple: Scrogs or *Scrog-apple. |
| 1824 Scott St. Ronan's xxxvi, ‘Scrogie Touchwood, if you please,’ said the senior; ‘the *scrog branch first, for it must become rotten ere it become touchwood.’ |
| 1596 Dalrymple tr. Leslie's Hist. Scot. I. 288 The kingis body is layd on a horse, and twa myles frome the castell castne in a *scrogg buss. 1824 Scott St. Ronan's xviii, He got a handsome piece of parchment, blazoned with a white lion for Mowbray, to be borne quarterly, with three stunted or scrog-bushes for Scrogie, and became thenceforth Mr. Scrogie Mowbray. |
| 1887 R. M. Calder in Minstrelsy of Merse (1893) 259 The *scrogg tree in the meadow. |
▪ II. scrog, v. dial.
(skrɒg)
[f. scrog n.]
trans. To cut with a hook.
| 1847 Jrnl. R. Agric. Soc. VIII. ii. 282 Beans are either pulled by women or cut with a hook, ‘scrogged’. 1893 in Cozens-Hardy Broad Norfolk 84 Scrog, to cut field beans with a sickle or hook. |