Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US, orig. jazz) to survive with difficulty, to eke out one’s bare living, often through unpleasant, degrading methods.

1851		in N.E. Eliason Tarheel Talk (1956) 292: I scuffle hard but can not get along [...] I am not worth five dollars.
1899		F.E. Daniel Recollections of a Rebel Surgeon 262: Poor Leah, the cast-off, was scuffling for a living.
1928		Thurman & Rapp Harlem in Coll. Writings (2003) 322: father: Hello, son, how’s tricks? jasper: Pretty hard scufflin’.
1928		J. Peterkin Scarlet Sister Mary 165: If you nanny goat didn’ scuffle for rations, Unex wouldn’t have a Gawd’s drop o milk.
1934		Z.N. Hurston Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1995) 12: He mought put yuh tuh work. And if he do, son, you scuffle hard so’s he’ll work yuh reg’lar.
1944		D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 109: The cats and the bats [...] skiffling and skuffling, trying to get under the wire.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 208: I’m tired of scufflin’ and my feet are too long outa work.
1953		R. Mais Hills Were Joyful Together (1966) 39: It had been a good day’s scuffling.
1965		L. Bruce How to Talk Dirty 20: I would like to believe that if I were still scuffling [...] I would be happy for him.
1968		L. Barrett Rastafarians (1977) 88: Here the most industrious began a new life in what Kingstonians called ‘skuffling,’ which means making the best of life by any means possible.
1968		‘Hy Lit’ Hy Lit’s Unbelievable Dict. of Hip Words 35: skuffling – Broke; out of work; in short pants [...] trying to make ends meet.
1975		E. Torres Carlito’s Way 84: Here was Earl scuffling alongside me for twenty years.
1980		J.L. Gwaltney Drylongso 132: When I was a kid I had to scuffle and I did any kind of work.
1990		(con. 1930s–60s) H. Huncke Guilty of Everything (1998) 240: I had never really been out scuffling on my own.
2003		Simon & Burns ‘Stray Rounds’ Wire ser. 2 ep. 9 [TV script] My boys ain’t gonna be scufflin’.

2. (US, orig. jazz) to dance.

1949

Louis Jordan ‘Saturday Night Fish Fry’ 🎵 It was rockin’! It was rockin’! / You never seen such scufflin’ and shufflin’ till the break of dawn!

3. (US black/W.I., also scuffle up) to collect, raise or obtain money or something desirable.

1929		Lil Johnson House Rent Scuffle‘’ lyrics] We got to scuffle the house rent tonight.
1943		C. Thompson These My People 20: Someone ‘scuffled’ a discarded cigarette butt from the dry gutter.
1945		‘Salome’ in Mess Songs & Rhymes of the RAAF 25: Talk about a treat! we scuffled all the meat, / And drank all the beer in the boozer down the street.
1955		S. Allen Bop Fables 20: We’d better scuffle.
1964		D. Gregory Nigger 136: I scuffled up enough money that week to have the Underwoods’ phone turned back on.
1974		(con. late 1940s) E. Thompson Tattoo (1977) 539: You just scuffle for pennies and buck the tide.
1989		C. Hyatt When Me Was A Boy 8: The big boy them at the back a class an him was to bruk it up on the quiet an sen up the pieces to [...] everybody who was in on the sweetie scufflin’.
1999		Guardian G2 24 Aug. 13: I got paid $100 a week so I didn’t have to scuffle for gigs any more.