Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Scurvy character; meanness; baseness; shabbiness.

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

  • noun The quality or state of being scurvy; vileness; meanness.

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

  • noun The quality or state of being scurvy; vileness; meanness.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the adjective scurvy.

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Examples

  • A staggering hound, with scurviness and sores, came up the steps, then on the porch, and licked his face ....

    The Bishop of Cottontown A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills John Trotwood Moore

  • Old Mizaldus taught that "the fasting spittle of a whole and sound person both quite taketh away all scurviness, or redness of the face, ringworms, tetters, and all kinds [179] of pustules, by smearing or rubbing the infected place therewith; and likewise it clean puts away thereby all painful swelling by the means of any venomous thing as hornets, spiders, toads, and such like."

    Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure William Thomas Fernie

  • In which passage, Shakspeare, who never uses words in vain, nor with a grain less than their full weight, opposes the divineness of men, or their walking with God, to the scurviness of men, or their wallowing with swine; and again, he opposes the holiness of men, -- in the sense of

    Love's Meinie Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds John Ruskin 1859

  • "I guessed that my beautiful stepmother intended me some such scurviness from the circumstance of her having kept me in ignorance of my father's death.

    Saint Martin's Summer Rafael Sabatini 1912

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