Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to draw on the pavement with chalk.

1842		Kendal Mercury 23 July 1/2: Cadgers screeving [...] There are many cadgers who write short sentences with chalk on the flags .
1850		Freeman’s Jrnl 16 Feb. 4/5: I took to screeving (writing on the stone) [...] There is one man who draws Christ’s heads with a crown of thorns [...] in coloured chalks.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor III 214/1: I’ve followed up ‘screeving,’ as it’s sometimes called, or drawing in coloured chalks on flag-stones.
1876		J.H. Ewing Jan of Windmill 302: The crowd was gathered round a street-artist who was ‘screeving’, or drawing pictures on the pavement in coloured chalks .
1933		‘George Orwell’ Down and Out in Complete Works I (1986) 166: Screeving, you mean?

2. to write, esp. to write fraudulent documents or letters.

1856		H. Mayhew Great World of London I 42: Our inquiries among the London beggars, and especially the ‘screeving’ or beggar-letter writing class.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 284/1: The newspapers ‘screeved’ about Rush. [Ibid.] 311/2: ‘Screeving’ – that is to say, writing false or exaggerated accounts of afflictions and privations.
1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1887		W.E. Henley ‘Villon’s Straight Tip’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 176: Suppose you screeve, or go cheap-jack? / Or fake the broads? or fig a nag?
1937		J. Curtis You’re in the Racket, Too 264: Does that look like my writing? I can’t screeve as classy as all that.
2019		P. Baker Fabulosa 297/2: screeve 1. to write.
2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 4: I am screeving my memoirs.