scrapie
/ˈskɹeɪpi/noun
scrapie is a noun meaning “A degenerative prion disease of sheep and goats that attacks the central nervous system” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-C-R-A-P-I-E, and it appears about once in every 15 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of scrapie is scrapies.
What does scrapie mean?
noun
- 1
A degenerative prion disease of sheep and goats that attacks the central nervous system.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce scrapie?
- UK /ˈskɹeɪpi/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-scrapie.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of scrapie
- scrapies plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is scrapie?
Scrapie appears about once in every 15 million words in written English, the 115,751st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Scrapie in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense degenerative prion disease:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | tremblante du mouton |
| German | Traberkrankheit, Scrapie |
| Portuguese | scrapie |
| Spanish | prurito lumbar |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does scrapie come from?
From scrape + -ie, from the tendency of affected animals to scrape themselves against solid objects.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).