scotch
verb/skɒtʃ/
/skɑːtʃ/
Verb Forms
| present simple I / you / we / they scotch | /skɒtʃ/ /skɑːtʃ/ |
| he / she / it scotches | /ˈskɒtʃɪz/ /ˈskɑːtʃɪz/ |
| past simple scotched | /skɒtʃt/ /skɑːtʃt/ |
| past participle scotched | /skɒtʃt/ /skɑːtʃt/ |
| -ing form scotching | /ˈskɒtʃɪŋ/ /ˈskɑːtʃɪŋ/ |
- scotch something to stop something from happening; to take action to end something
- Plans for a merger have been scotched.
- Rumours that he had fled the country were promptly scotched by his wife.
Oxford Collocations DictionaryScotch is used with these nouns as the object:- myth
- rumour
Word Originearly 17th cent. (as a noun): of unknown origin; perhaps related to the verbskate. The sense ‘render temporarily harmless’ is based on an emendation of Shakespeare's Macbeth iii. ii. 13 as “We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it”, originally understood as a use of scotch ‘to cut or score skin’; the sense ‘put an end to’ (early 19th cent.) results from the influence on this of the notion of wedging or blocking something so as to render it inoperative.
Check pronunciation:
scotch