scrabbly
Americanadjective
-
insignificantly small or sparse.
scrabbly tufts of grass sprouting from the parched lawn.
-
scratchy; raspy.
Etymology
Origin of scrabbly
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.
And yet, there Andrews stood this spring on a scrabbly hill near Starbuck, Wash., looking over his family’s dominion — a 9,700-acre farm and ranch at the edge of the Palouse prairie.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 28, 2019
Baehrel has concocted a canny fulfillment of a particular foodie fantasy: an eccentric hermit wrings strange masterpieces from the woods and his scrabbly back yard.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 22, 2016
Fair enough, I thought, recalling the scratchy, scrabbly, windblown descent several of us had skied the day before.
From New York Times ● Apr. 3, 2014
A young man, with a nest of scrabbly wiring on his head and an old tire over his shoulder, might almost be modelling a piece of mad millinery.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 10, 2012
I stepped into the woods, looked around, could not see the crow, but noticed a big stick nest in a scrabbly pine.
From "My Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
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.
