Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US campus) unpleasant, distasteful.

1901

Monroe & Northup ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:iii 146: scutty, adj. Various meanings generally uncomplimentary and disparaging, disagreeable, ‘tacky’.

(US) (orig. medical use) menial or routine work.

1921		Nation’s Health 3 188: The scrubbing and ‘scut work’ of her [i.e. a nurse’s] training are really helpful in district work;.
1939		L. Berg Twilight Comes Early 178: The willingness with which he had done ‘scut’ work the previous summer, heaped upon him all the duties to keep him busy every minute of the unforgiving hospital day.
1946		Mademoiselle Handbook for the Girl with a Job 47: To many people, editorial work sounds glamorous. [...] Fledgling editorial assistants, however, discover that there’s scut work to be done in an editorial office.
1948		R. Egger Public Administration and Extension Work 39: The mere scut-work involved in keeping the counties staffed and rolling.
1953		B. Dogbolt Grave Example 75: He’s got a hospital full of interns and residents to do his scut work.
1964		N. Katkov Eric Mattson 422: They let me work that month, taking histories, doing the scut work. The scut work! I thought they were the kindest people on earth!
1975		R.K. Irish If Things Don’t Improve Soon... 53: Thirty-five thousand secretarial positions are open today in New York City largely because clerical work is called scut work.
1981		M. Baker Nam (1982) 106: I’d volunteer to clean the latrines and mop the floors. [...] I just didn’t want to look at another patient, so I’d do scut work.
1987		C. Hiaasen Double Whammy (1990) 85: ‘What kind of work?’ Decker asked. ‘Scut work.’.
1999		M. Wardell et al. (eds) Rethinking the Labor Process 58: Temporary cledrical workers [...] consistently reported being given the worst work of the office[...] They referred to the work they most often received as ‘shit work,’ ‘dreg work,’ or ‘scut work’.
2007		C. Goffard Snitch Jacket 121: I had picked up some under-the-counter scutwork [...] peeling shrimp and scrubbing floors.
2013		A. Bledsoe et al. Sidekicks! 328: That’s what I do. Scut work. Crappy scut work. Take notes. Pick up dry cleaning. Distill tinctures. And the blowfish. I always spend at least an hour a week picking poison sacs out of the damned blowfish.
2016		Guardian 21 Aug. 🌐 Still does’t mean we shouldn’t address the problem of the poor buggers who get treated like shit doing the scut work.
2023		A. Nette Orphan Road 107: ‘Neither of those boys are used to doing their own scut work’.