Fig. to find and collect something; to locate and assemble a group of people or things. (Based on scrape something up.) Fm sure we can scrape up someone for the job. Mary scraped a few dollars together for some new books. John barely scraped up enough money to pay his rent.
to gather things together by scraping. The waiter scraped all the crumbs together and removed them from the table with a little gadget. Karen scraped together all the trimmings and set them aside.
to gather something that is not easily available, esp. money He managed to scrape together $20 for the train and came back home.Many immigrants have difficulty scraping enough money together for the application.
Usage notes: also in the form scrape up something: Somehow these families managed to scrape up the tuition fee.
To accumulate or produce something with difficulty: We scraped together just enough cash to pay for the pizza. The kitchen was so empty that we could barely scrape a meal together.