Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The skin covering the top of the human head.
  • noun A portion of this skin with its attached hair, cut from a body especially as a battle trophy or as proof in claiming a bounty.
  • noun A piece of hide from the skull of certain animals, such as the fox, shown as proof of killing in order to collect a bounty.
  • intransitive verb To cut or tear the scalp from.
  • intransitive verb To deprive of top growth or a top layer.
  • intransitive verb To resell at a price higher than the established value.
  • intransitive verb To buy and sell (securities or commodities) in order to make small quick profits.
  • intransitive verb To engage in the reselling of something, such as tickets, at a price higher than the established value.
  • intransitive verb To buy and sell securities or commodities for small quick profits.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cut or scrape. See scalping-iron.
  • noun A bed of oysters or mussels.
  • noun The top of the head; the head, skull, or sconce.
  • noun The integument of the upper part of the head and associated subcutaneous structures; the skin, the occipitofrontalis muscle, and its broad fascia-like tendon and connective tissue, with their vessels and nerves, together forming the covering of the skull, and freely movable upon the subjacent bones.
  • noun The scalp or a part of it, together with the hair growing upon it, cut or torn from the head of a living or dead person. Among the North American Indians scalps are taken as trophies of victory.
  • noun The skin of the head of a noxious wild animal. A bounty has sometimes been offered for wolves' scalps.
  • noun The head or skull of a whale exclusive of the lower jaw.
  • noun In heraldry, the skin of the head of a stag with the horns attached: a rare bearing.
  • To deprive of the scalp; remove the scalp of.
  • Hence To skin or flay in general; denude; lay bare; specifically, to deprive of grass or turf.
  • In milling: To separate (the fuzzy growths at the ends of the berries of wheat or other grain) by attrition and screening, with or without the employment of aspirators.
  • To separate, after the first operation of the breaking-rolls (the broken wheat, semolina, and break-flour), and after each subsequent use of the breaking-rolls (making in some schemes of milling six separate operations) to treat (the products) in the same manner with sieves, bolts, or screens of different grades of fineness.
  • To sell at less than official or recognized rates, by sharing the commission or profit with the purchaser, or by purchasing cheap and asking only a small advance: as, to scalp railway-tickets.
  • In Amer. polit. slang, to destroy the political influence of, or punish for insubordination to party rule.
  • noun An early type of cultivator blade, nearly horizontal in position, so called as cutting a thin layer from the soil. Cf. sweep, 12 .

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To deprive of the scalp; to cut or tear the scalp from the head of.
  • transitive verb (Surg.) To remove the skin of.
  • transitive verb (Milling) To brush the hairs or fuzz from, as wheat grains, in the process of high milling.
  • intransitive verb Cant To make a small, quick profit by slight fluctuations of the market; -- said of brokers who operate in this way on their own account.
  • noun Scot. A bed of oysters or mussels.
  • noun That part of the integument of the head which is usually covered with hair.
  • noun A part of the skin of the head, with the hair attached, cut or torn off from an enemy by the Indian warriors of North America, as a token of victory.
  • noun Fig.: The top; the summit.
  • noun a long tuft of hair left on the crown of the head by the warriors of some tribes of American Indians.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun now dialectal The top of the head; the skull.
  • noun anatomy The part of the head where the hair grows from, or used to grow from
  • noun A victory.
  • noun Scotland A bed or stratum of shellfish; a scaup.
  • verb To remove the scalp (part of the head from where the hair grows), by brutal act or accident.
  • verb slang To sell for a greatly inflated price to those in desperation, as in scalping tickets to a ball game.
  • verb To screen or sieve ore before further processing

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb sell illegally, as on the black market
  • noun the skin that covers the top of the head
  • verb remove the scalp of

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, top of the head, of Scandinavian origin; see skel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Originally a northern word, and therefore presumed to come from a Scandinavian source, although the sense-development is unclear; compare Old Norse skálpr ("sheath"), Middle Dutch schelpe ("shell").

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