Scramble means to move quickly in a rushed, awkward, or clumsy way, often using your hands and feet. When you're late for the school bus and suddenly hear it coming down the street, you might scramble to grab your backpack, find your shoes, and rush out the door. Rock climbers scramble up steep slopes that are too rough to walk up normally but not quite steep enough to need ropes.

The word also means to mix things up in a random, disorganized way. When you scramble eggs, you stir them vigorously so the yolks and whites blend together. A football team might scramble their play signals so the other team can't predict what they'll do next. During World War II, both sides used machines to scramble secret messages, encoding them so enemies couldn't read them even if they intercepted them.

In both meanings, there's a sense of urgency, confusion, or disorder. Whether you're scrambling up a hillside or scrambling to finish homework before dinner, you're moving fast and probably not being very neat about it.

As a noun, a scramble is a quick, messy rush, like that morning dash to get ready for school. In sports, a quarterback who gets chased out of the pocket and runs around frantically is called a scrambler.