scrunt

Onomatopoetic.

Unknown etymology. The term appears related to Old Norse *skrindr (“starved, meager, emaciated, haggard, thin”), found as Old Swedish skrinder, Swedish skrinn, skrin, Norwegian skrann, skrinn, potentially related to Lithuanian skrèsti (“getting scabby”).

A related root is found in scrawny, scranny and scrannel, to an old root for drying out, such as Old English scrinian (“to dry”); compare Swedish skranig, skranglig, skral, skran, Norwegian skran, Danish skrån (“scrawny, meager, dry, barren”).

More direct cognates appear to exist in North Germanic, with the comparative root sense of “skeleton, dried body” → “decrepit, frail, rickety (person)”, but many roots appear to be at play (compare Proto-Germanic *skraudō): dialectal Norwegian skrunt (“fruit scraps”) (such as an “apple core (apple skeleton), eaten apple, apple scraps” (and thereof)), skrunta (“(skin) crease”), dialectal Swedish skrynta, skrönta (“body, back, shoulderblade, hollow tree (tree skeleton)”), with a predominant variation without the -n-: dialectal Norwegian skrott (“body; fruit scraps”), Swedish skrutt, skrott (“scrap, decrepit (old) useless person, scrotum, dried wrinkly body, skeleton, the devil”) (skrutta f, äppelskrutt (“eaten apple”), skruttig (adjective)), dialectal Danish skrut, skrutte (“body, skeleton, back, humpback”), skrot (“body, belly”). Swedish skrutt appears related semantically to both Icelandic skrjóður (“scrap, old geezer, scrotum”) and English scrote, with the same three core principles: scrap, useless old dry person, scrotum.