up to scratch
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
meeting the required standard
Literally: at the level of a scratch or line
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Is your radio receiving equipment up to scratch?’
All these people needed a boot up the backside at regular intervals to keep them up to scratch.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “up to scratch” mean?
meeting the required standard Literally: at the level of a scratch or line
Is “up to scratch” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.