scroll

Meanings

Noun

• A roll of paper or parchment; a writing formed into a roll.
• An ornament formed of undulations giving off spirals or sprays, usually suggestive of plant form. Roman architectural ornament is largely of some scroll pattern.
• Spirals or sprays in the shape of an actual plant.
• A mark or flourish added to a person's signature, intended to represent a seal, and in some States allowed as a substitute for a seal. [U.S.] Alexander Mansfield Burrill.
• The carved end of a violin, viola, cello or other stringed instrument, most commonly scroll-shaped but occasionally in the form of a human or animal head.
• A skew surface.
• A kind of sweet roll baked in a somewhat spiral shape.
• The incremental movement of graphics on a screen, removing one portion to show the next.
• A spiral waterway placed round a turbine to regulate the flow.
• A turbinate bone.

Verb

• To change one's view of data on a computer's display, typically using a scroll bar or a scroll wheel to move in gradual increments.
• To move in or out of view horizontally or vertically.
• To flood a chat system with numerous lines of text, causing legitimate messages to scroll out of view before they can be read.

Origin

• From Middle English scrowle, scrolle, from earlier scrowe, scrouwe (influenced by Middle English rolle), from Old French escroe, escrowe, escrouwe, from Frankish *skraudu, from Proto-Germanic *skraudō, from *skrew-, extension of *(s)ker-. shred and escrow.