scruple

1. 1.

   hesitate on moral grounds

   “The man scrupled to perjure himself”

   Broaderhesitate
2. 2.

   raise scruples

   “He lied and did not even scruple about it”

   Broaderfuss
3. 3.

   have doubts about

   Broaderwonder

Other forms of scruple

plural

scruples·

past tense

scrupled·

present participle

scrupling·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about scruple

What does scruple mean?

scruple means "a unit of apothecary weight equal to 20 grains". That is the primary sense; the word has 6 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in scruple?

scruple has 2 syllables: scru-ple. The stress falls on "scru". In IPA it is /ˈskɹupəl/.

What is another word for scruple?

Close synonyms include qualm, misgiving. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is scruple a common word?

scruple is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.