To scribble means to write or draw carelessly and quickly, usually producing messy, hard-to-read marks. When you scribble a note during class, you're writing so fast that the letters might barely look like letters. A toddler scribbles with crayons, making wild, looping lines across paper without trying to create anything recognizable.

The word captures that sense of speed and carelessness. A doctor might scribble a prescription so quickly that pharmacists struggle to read it. You might scribble down a phone number before you forget it, or scribble out a wrong answer on your homework.

Scribble can also be a noun: those messy marks themselves are called scribbles. If your notebook margins are filled with doodles and random scribbles, it means you were drawing absentmindedly while thinking about something else.

The word isn't always negative, though. Sometimes scribbling is exactly what you need: quick notes that only you have to read, or loose sketches when you're trying to capture an idea before it vanishes. Many great drawings and stories started as scribbles and got refined over time.