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Synonyms

scraggy

American  
[skrag-ee] / ˈskræg i /

adjective

scraggier, scraggiest
  1. lean or thin; scrawny.

  2. meager.

  3. irregular; craggy; jagged.


scraggy British  
/ ˈskræɡɪ /

adjective

  1. lean or scrawny

  2. rough; unkempt

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms


Etymology

Origin of scraggy

First recorded in 1565–75; scrag + -y 1


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

The soldiers call it a forest, though it's just a line of scraggy trees separating them from Russian positions.

From BBC ● Nov. 7, 2025

Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures of tall, elegantly scraggy humans loom large in people’s minds.

From Seattle Times ● Jul. 19, 2022

Goat-horned half-demons with scraggy coats of fur, lolling tongues and threatening bundles of birch branches are no one’s idea of a welcome guest on a winter’s night.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 8, 2019

Unaccountably angry and smug, the scraggy Smithers is Brutus’s cynical, conniving cohort.

From The New Yorker ● Apr. 3, 2017

The train runs northwest, through hundreds of miles of scraggy forests and granite outcrops, hundreds of small blue anonymous lakes edged with swamp and bulrushes and dead spruce, old snow in the shadows.

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood

After leaving the timber-line, the riders found the scrub bushes grew scraggier and shorter, and finally the top of the peak was left as bare and craggy as any volcanic formation.

From Girl Scouts in the Rockies by Lillian Elizabeth Roy

The old sailor, ignorant of Arabic feminine names, thought "it a misnomer," for of all his she-persecutors she was the leanest and scraggiest.

From The Boy Slaves by Mayne Reid

He was the leanest, scraggiest long thing I have ever seen.

From The Mountebank by William John Locke

He imagines 254 that he has demolished one quarter of the scraggiest hen in the hen-house.”

From A Very Naughty Girl by L. T. Meade

“It’s the scraggiest part of the whole forest,—only fit for owls to live in!”

From The Joyous Story of Toto by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

On our way we paused to admire the church bell—an ancient dinner-bell, which hung by a piece of string from the longest and scraggiest arm of a very old and leafless tree.

From The Last Voyage to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' by R. T. (Robert Taylor) Pritchett

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