offscouring
Americannoun
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Often offscourings. something scoured off; filth; refuse.
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a social outcast.
Etymology
Origin of offscouring
1520–30; off + scour 1 ( def. ), + -ing 1 ( def. ), after verb phrase scour off
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They were the despised and rejected, the wretched and the spat upon, the earth’s offscouring; and he was in their company, and they would swallow up his soul.
From "Go Tell It on the Mountain" by James Baldwin
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It is here called "The offscouring of the British land."
From Microcosmography or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters by Earle, John
Had we been strangers to this offscouring of a thousand miles of beach, swirling past us at a six-mile gait, we might well have doubted the prudence of launching little Pilgrim upon such a sea.
From Afloat on the Ohio An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo by Thwaites, Reuben Gold
Where, on the contrary, its exercise is regarded as the badge of dishonor and the vile office of the refuse and offscouring of the race, its largess must be proportionably meagre and scanty.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 02, December, 1857 by Various
The third is—to her coffin; broken down; beggared, perhaps starving, she’ll die surrounded by the offscouring of the earth—happy if she reaches her grave before she has run her full course.’
From The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 Volume 23, Number 5 by Clark, Lewis Gaylord
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.