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• scarry
  scarry

  adjective

  marked with the scars of wounds.
• Scarry
  Scarry

  noun

  Richard McClure, 1919–94, U.S. author and illustrator of children's books.

scarry

¹ American  

[skahr-ee] / ˈskɑr i /

adjective

scarrier, scarriest

1. marked with the scars of wounds.

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scarry ² American  

[skahr-ee] / ˈskɑr i /

adjective

1. full of precipitous, rocky places.

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Scarry ³ American  

[skahr-ee] / ˈskɑr i /

noun

1. Richard McClure, 1919–94, U.S. author and illustrator of children's books.

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Etymology

Origin of scarry¹

First recorded in 1645–55; scar ¹ + -y ¹

Origin of scarry²

Middle English word dating back to 1350–1400; see origin at scar ², -y ¹

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

scarry Scarry scarriest

They tell how they would ride at night and how scarry lookin' they was.

From Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Arkansas Narratives, Part 5 by Work Projects Administration

No gently graduated steps lead up to them: they are upon us with the violent abruptness of a streak of lightning, and like this, they, too, may leave behind them a scarry trace.

From Maurice Guest by Richardson, Henry Handel

In that past she has invoked Lowly Worm, the Richard Scarry children’s book character, to walk through how tariffs ripple into inflation.

From Barron's ● Mar. 13, 2026

One of the more frightening aspects of pain, Scarry notes, is that what is “indisputably real to the sufferer” may be, when not accompanied by grave outward signs, “unreal to others.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2023

“It is when a country has become to its population a fiction that wars begin,” Elaine Scarry writes in The Body in Pain, “however intensely beloved that fiction is.”

From Slate ● Sep. 11, 2021

It “destroys a person’s self and world,” as Elaine Scarry, a Harvard scholar, noted in her influential book “The Body in Pain.”

From New York Times ● Jul. 16, 2021

However it had come about, poor Scarry had indubitably been put into the earth face downward.

From The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians by Bierce, Ambrose

I’ve seen landsmen both on board ship and ashore who could give points in that line to the scarriest old Jack-tar who ever munched salt horse, and knock him hollow at that.”

From The Red Derelict by Mitford, Bertram