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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

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

scarry Scarry scarriest

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 Henry Handel Richardson

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

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

The exhibition also includes murals featuring familiar childhood imagery: One is an illustration of an enormous traffic accident by children’s book author Richard Scarry.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 16, 2026

“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

As Ms. Scarry writes, “Physical pain … obliterates all psychological content, painful, pleasurable and neutral.”

From New York Times ● Jul. 16, 2021

IV Having finished staking off his claim Mr. Doman walked back to the centre of it and stood again at the spot where his search among the graves had expired in the exclamation, "Scarry."

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

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 Bertram Mitford

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