Wiktionary
vb. 1 To remove something by scratching. 2 To remove something which was written, by erase or by putting a mark through it.
WordNet
v. strike or cancel by or as if by rubbing or crossing out; "scratch out my name on that list" [syn: cut out]
Usage examples of "scratch out".
The fountain pen has been used to scratch out a bulge in the river just upstream of this mark.
By God it was hard times when a man had to sit home and wipe his kids' noses so his wife could go and scratch out a lousy buck that wouldn't even buy them a gallon of gas.
All the same, solitary bucks--if they can find no existing holes to make use of--will sometimes scratch out short tunnels for shelter, although it is not work that they tackle at all seriously.
He was about to scratch out the drawing when he decided against it, and then he opened the second file and began to read.
He was on the road most of the time, playing run-down houses, trying to scratch out a living for my mother.
He could barely scratch out his letters in the crudest fashion imaginable, and unlike some clerics he had no trained memory to recall the Holy Verses in their entirety or recite the genealogy of regnants and nobles back to the tenth generation.
It represented what small livelihood his father and his older brother had been able to scratch out of this valley.
It was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moon -- and the idea was to see which pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms.