scrubby

[skruhb-ee]

adjective

scrubbier, scrubbiest 

1. low or stunted, as trees.

2. consisting of or covered with scrub, stunted trees, etc.

3. undersized or inferior, as animals.

4. wretched; shabby.

scrubby

/ ˈskrʌbɪ /

adjective

1. covered with or consisting of scrub

2. (of trees or vegetation) stunted in growth

3. informal,  messy

Other Word Forms

• scrubbily adverb
• scrubbiness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of scrubby¹

First recorded in 1745–55; scrub ² + -y ¹

Example Sentences

Higher and higher they climbed, above the tree line, to where there were only rocks and scrubby plants and trickling mountain streams.

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It was a landscape of scrubby shrubs and chaparral and grasses.

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But Sui Ching insists and, for once, her husband, Jack, follows her lead, and so the family heads south to the “twenty hectares of scrubby jungle and farmland” that now belong to her.

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She says she had been stuck in France for two months, after travelling there from Vietnam via Hungary, sleeping in tents in a scrubby forest.

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Setting fires in the Sandhills of central North Carolina requires an understanding of moisture levels in the scrubby underbrush, and she gets a better sense of it in bare feet.

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