■ verb
1》 scratch or grope around with one's fingers to find, collect, or hold on to something.
2》 move quickly and in a disorderly manner; scramble.
■ noun
1》 an act of scrabbling.
2》 a disorderly struggle or fight.
3》 ( Scrabble ) trademark a board game in which players build up words from small lettered squares or tiles.
Origin
C16 (in the sense 'scrawl'): from MDu. schrabbelen , from schrabben 'to scrape'.