A Dictionary of Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words / Used at the Present Day in the Streets of London; the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the Houses of Parliament; the Dens of St. Giles; and the Palaces of St. James.

by John Camden Hotten

SCRATCH-RACE (on the Turf), a race where any horse, aged, winner, or loser, can run with any weights; in fact, a race without restrictions. At Cambridge a boat-race, where the crews are drawn by lot.

SCREAMING, first-rate, splendid. Believed to have been first used in the Adelphi play-bills; “a SCREAMING farce,” one calculated to make the audience scream with laughter. Now a general expression.

SCREEVE, a letter, a begging petition.

SCREEVE, to write, or devise; “to SCREEVE a fakement,” to concoct, or write, a begging letter, or other impostor’s document. From the Dutch, SCHRYVEN; German, SCHREIBEN; French, ECRIVANT (old form), to write.

SCREEVER, a man who draws with coloured chalks on the pavement figures of our Saviour crowned with thorns, specimens of elaborate writing, thunderstorms, ships on fire, &c. The men who attend these pavement chalkings, and receive halfpence and sixpences from the admirers of street art, are not always the draughtsmen. The artist, or SCREEVER, drew, perhaps, in half-a-dozen places that very morning, and rented the spots out to as many cadaverous looking men.

SCREW, an unsound, or broken-down horse, that requires both whip and spur to get him along.

SCREW, a key,—skeleton, or otherwise.

SCREW, a turnkey.

SCREW, a mean or stingy person.

SCREW, salary or wages.