1 [U,sing.] a layer of bubbles or an unpleasant substance that forms on the surface of a liquid:
Skim off any scum. * stinking water covered by a thick green scum
2 (informal) [pl.] an insulting word for people that you strongly disapprove of:
Don't waste your sympathy on scum like that. * Drug dealers are the scum of the earth (= the worst people there are).
scummy adjective:
scummy water * scummy people dropping litter
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for scum is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is scum a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, scum is tagged as noun.
Does scum appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — scum appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.