chicken scratch vs scrawl

chicken scratch

noun
  • Cramped or illegible handwriting. 

  • Chicken feed consisting of random mixed grains such as corn, wheat, barley, sorghum and milling by-products. 

  • A type of cross-stitch embroidery done on gingham fabric. 

scrawl

noun
  • Irregular, possibly illegible handwriting. 

  • Writing that lacks literary merit. 

  • A hastily or carelessly written note etc. 

  • The young of the dog-crab. 

  • A broken branch of a tree. 

verb
  • To write in an irregular or illegible manner. 

  • To write something hastily or illegibly. 

  • To write unskilfully and inelegantly. 

  • To creep; crawl; (by extension) to swarm with crawling things 

How often have the words chicken scratch and scrawl occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )