scrabble

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
scrabble/ˈskrabl/

▶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’.