Definitions

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

  • noun A joint made by cutting or notching the ends of two pieces correspondingly and strapping or bolting them together.
  • noun Either of the correspondingly cut or notched ends that fit together to form such a joint.
  • transitive verb To join by means of a scarf.
  • transitive verb To cut a scarf in.
  • noun A long piece of cloth worn about the head, neck, or shoulders.
  • noun A decorative cloth for covering the top of a piece of furniture; a runner.
  • noun A sash indicating military rank.
  • transitive verb To dress, cover, or decorate with or as if with a scarf.
  • transitive verb To wrap (an outer garment) around one like a scarf.
  • transitive verb To eat or drink voraciously; devour.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In carpentry, to cut a scarf in; unite by means of a scarf. See scarf, n., 2.
  • To flense, flay, or remove the skin and blubber from (a whale); cut off from a whale with the spade, as blubber; spade; cut in.
  • To wrap around one, as in the manner of a scarf.
  • To cover with or as if with a scarf.
  • noun A cut; notch; groove; channel.
  • noun In carpentry, a joint by which the ends of two pieces of timber are united so as to form a continuous piece; also, the part cut away from each of two pieces of timber to be joined together longitudinally, so that the corresponding ends may fit together in an even joint. (Different scarf-joints are shown in the accompanying cut.) The joint is secured by bolts and straps.
  • noun In metal-working, the flattened or chamfered edges of iron prepared for union by welding or brazing, as in the brazing together of the two ends of a band-saw.
  • noun An obsolete variant of scarp.
  • noun The cormorant.
  • noun A band of some fine material used as a decorative accessory to costume, and sometimes put to practical use, as for muffling the head and face. The narrow mantle worn by women about 1830 to 1840 was of the nature of a scarf.
  • noun A band of warm and soft material, as knitted or crocheted worsted, worn around the neck and head in cold weather.
  • noun A cravat so worn that it covers the bosom of the shirt, whether it is passed through a ring, or tied in a knot, or put together in a permanent shape and fastened with a hook and eye or a similar appliance. See scarf-pin, scarf-ring.
  • noun In heraldry, same as banderole.
  • noun A long thin plate.

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

  • noun An article of dress of a light and decorative character, worn loosely over the shoulders or about the neck or the waist; a light shawl or handkerchief for the neck; also, a cravat; a neckcloth.
  • transitive verb To form a scarf on the end or edge of, as for a joint in timber, metal rods, etc.
  • transitive verb To unite, as two pieces of timber or metal, by a scarf joint.
  • transitive verb To throw on loosely; to put on like a scarf.
  • transitive verb To dress with a scarf, or as with a scarf; to cover with a loose wrapping.
  • noun Scot. A cormorant.
  • noun In a piece which is to be united to another by a scarf joint, the part of the end or edge that is tapered off, rabbeted, or notched so as to be thinner than the rest of the piece.
  • noun A scarf joint.
  • noun A joint formed by welding, riveting, or brazing together the overlapping scarfed ends, or edges, of metal rods, sheets, etc.
  • noun See under Weld.

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

  • noun A long, often knitted, garment worn around the neck.
  • noun A headscarf.
  • noun A type of joint in woodworking.
  • noun A groove on one side of a sewing machine needle.
  • verb To throw on loosely; to put on like a scarf.
  • verb To dress with a scarf, or as with a scarf; to cover with a loose wrapping.
  • verb transitive, US, slang To eat very quickly.
  • verb To shape by grinding.

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

  • verb masturbate while strangling oneself
  • verb wrap in or adorn with a scarf
  • noun a garment worn around the head or neck or shoulders for warmth or decoration
  • verb unite by a scarf joint
  • noun a joint made by notching the ends of two pieces of timber or metal so that they will lock together end-to-end

Etymologies

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

[Middle English skarf (as in scarfnail, nail for fastening a scarf joint), probably from Old Norse skarfr, end piece of a board cut off on the bias.]

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

[French dialectal escarpe, sash, sling, from Old North French, variant of Old French escherpe, pilgrim's bag hung from the neck, from Frankish *skirpja, small rush, from Latin scirpus, rush.]

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

[Variant of scoff.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • WEIRDNET!!!!!!!!!!!

    April 3, 2008

  • My reaction to this was "Oh My God" following by laughing out loud, and two more iterations of that, followed by a hardy WTF, and one more "Oh My God" for good measure.

    April 3, 2008

  • One must assume the definitions provided are shown in no particularly organized order.

    April 3, 2008

  • Mother of pearl....This one must win a prize.

    April 3, 2008

  • HA! Topherclay, WordNet, the source for the definitions, supposedly provides the most common usage, and the code dutifully tries to order them along those lines. Not sure if it was my code or theirs that smurphed up, but something has gone horribly wrong.

    Either that, or "scarfing" has skyrocketed in popularity.

    April 3, 2008

  • HA! Topherclay, WordNet, the source for the definitions, supposedly provides the most common usage, and the code dutifully tries to order them along those lines. Not sure if it was my code or theirs that smurphed up, but something has gone horribly wrong.

    Either that, or "scarfing" has skyrocketed in popularity.

    April 3, 2008

  • I first heard this meaning for the word when a local middle-schooler died. I can see the humor in WeirdNet but this particular meaning isn't that funny to me.

    April 3, 2008

  • You're right; it isn't funny. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm merely laughing at the fact that it's the first definition to pop up under this word--which is so WeirdNet it's just...well, weird.

    April 3, 2008

  • Okay, if you hear the word scarf, what meaning comes quickly to mind? Surely not this one. It may have some gravitas, somewhere, but it's very odd. I don't get it at all. It may be my childhood, but ...

    April 3, 2008

  • Honestly? The first thing that comes to my mind is actually my brother's usage. To scarf something down is to eat it very quickly. We had lots of words for that in my house. Scoff, mung, gullet, and wolf, to name a few.

    April 3, 2008

  • That's why I listed it: the hippy usage of scarf was 'to eat quickly'.

    April 3, 2008

  • Yes, that's how my family tends to use the word too. I never realized it derived from hippy-speak, though. :-)

    April 3, 2008

  • John, scarf as listed above is the first of the verb senses. The noun senses, which are in a different synset, has the expected article of clothing. Perhaps that is the problem.

    April 5, 2008

  • And here I always thought WeirdNet's proclivities amounted to a feature, not a bug.

    April 8, 2008

  • c_b, are we thinking of the same middle schooler? She...no...no...?

    June 26, 2008

  • I'm just waiting for this to come up on Fox or MSNBC after recent newsworthy events.

    June 10, 2009

  • "A cut; notch; groove; channel."

    --Century Dictionary

    April 25, 2013