adjective
-
roughened because of small projections; scaly
-
indelicate, indecent, or salacious
scabrous humour
-
difficult to deal with; knotty
Other Word Forms
- scabrously adverb
- scabrousness noun
- unscabrous adjective
- unscabrously adverb
- unscabrousness noun
Etymology
Origin of scabrous
1575–85; < Latin scab ( e ) r rough + -ous
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.
O’Neill resolves the triangular conflict with a combination of religious fervor, metaphoric brooding and scabrous humor.
From Los Angeles Times
Beatty’s scabrous satire follows a Black man who decides to reinstate slavery in his rural Los Angeles enclave, a crime for which he finds himself in the hallowed halls of the Supreme Court.
From Los Angeles Times
The theater lost the case, and both “Saved” and Bond’s next play, “Early Morning,” a scabrous satire on British royalty, were banned in Britain.
From Seattle Times
His songs blended the scabrous and the sentimental, ranging from carousing anthems to snapshots of life in the gutter to unexpectedly tender love songs.
From Washington Times
He was primarily known for unleashing that arsenal in scabrously witty and linguistically daring novels, but he was also an essayist, memoirist and critic of the first rank.
From New York Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
