scrap
n. countablen. a small piece of something that is left over after the main part is gone. It can also mean a quick, unplanned fight.
n. a small fragment or leftover portion of something; also used to describe a brief, spontaneous physical altercation. Often used in the plural when referring to food waste.
He wrote his phone number on a scrap of paper.
The stray dog waited patiently by the kitchen door for a scrap of meat from the butcher.
The historian spent years piecing together a narrative from every available scrap of evidence found in the dusty archives.
From Middle English scrappe, from Old Norse skrap, from skrapa (“to scrape, scratch”), from Proto-Germanic skrapōną, skrepaną (“to scrape, scratch”), from Proto-Indo-European skreb-, skrep- (“to engrave”). Cf. Swedish skräp (“garbage”).
Perhaps from the obsolete colloquial meaning "sinister plot, scheme, villainy", or a dialectal variant of scrape.
Commonly used in the phrase 'scraps' to refer to leftover food; as a synonym for 'fight', it is informal.