scrubs
- 1The clothing worn by people while they perform surgery.
Still in his scrubs, the surgeon came out to tell the family the operation had gone well.
The hospital launders the scrubs worn in its operating rooms every day.
Note
Like pants, the word is plural even for a single outfit: a surgeon wears scrubs, or a set of scrubs, not a scrub. The singular survives mainly before another noun, as in scrub top or scrub cap. Beyond the operating room, the same plural covers any medical uniform made up of a short-sleeved shirt and pants.
- 2Plural of scrub.
Bad weather forced two launch scrubs in a single week.
Many body scrubs use sugar, salt or ground seeds to remove dead skin.
Note
The plural is regular, and it counts whatever the singular counts: hard scrubs of a floor, launch scrubs called off for weather, a shelf of face scrubs. The surgical clothing works differently, because there the plural is simply the ordinary form of the word and does not count separate garments.
scrubs is a form of scrub
scrub, noun: Stunted trees and bushes growing thickly in poor, dry or sandy soil, or land covered with them; often named after the main plant, as in palmetto scrub. Full entry
- Forms
- scrubscrubs plural
- Spelling
- scrub → scrubs: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
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