scarecrow
[skair-kroh]
- an object, usually a figure of a person in old clothes, set up to frighten crows or other birds away from crops.
- anything frightening but not really dangerous.
- a person in ragged clothes.
- an extremely thin person.
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Origin of scarecrow
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for scarecrow
Contemporary Examples
It would be like if after the 40th pipe in Flappy Bird was a scarecrow.
Lost For Thousands of Strokes: 'Desert Golfing' Is 'Angry Birds' as Modern ArtAlec Kubas-Meyer
January 2, 2015
There, the beloved characters would emerge: the Cowardly Lion singing about courage and the Scarecrow dancing with the crows.
There's no Judy Garland songs, no Scarecrow, no Tin Man, no Cowardly Lion.
His size 22 feet splayed out in front of him, he resembles an oversize version of the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.
And, like the scarecrow, I'm glad you found a bit of your brain.
Historical Examples
“I would not be seen in the street with that scarecrow,” murmured Giles.
The Armourer's PrenticesCharlotte M. Yonge
In the strange illumination of the search beams he seemed the wraith of a scarecrow.
Slaves of MercuryNat Schachner
He once told my mother that he had more than once changed clothes with a scarecrow.
Adventures and RecollectionsBill o'th' Hoylus End
It was a miserable-looking woman in clothes that might have been stolen from a scarecrow.
The ChristianHall Caine
Do you happen to know whatever became of the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow?
Dorothy and the Wizard in OzL. Frank Baum
scarecrow
- an object, usually in the shape of a man, made out of sticks and old clothes to scare birds away from crops
- a person or thing that appears frightening but is not actually harmful
- informal
- an untidy-looking person
- a very thin person
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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
Word Origin and History for scarecrow
n.
1550s, from scare (v.) + crow (n.). Earliest reference is to a person employed to scare birds. Meaning "device of straw and cloth in grotesque resemblance of a man, set up in a grain field or garden to frighten crows," is implied by 1580s; hence "gaunt, ridiculous person" (1590s). The older name for such a thing was shewel. Shoy-hoy apparently is another old word for a straw-stuffed scarecrow (Cobbett began using it as a political insult in 1819 and others picked it up; OED defines it as "one who scares away birds from a sown field," and says it is imitative of their cry).
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper