scrubby
Americanadjective
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low or stunted, as trees.
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consisting of or covered with scrub, stunted trees, etc.
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undersized or inferior, as animals.
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wretched; shabby.
adjective
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covered with or consisting of scrub
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(of trees or vegetation) stunted in growth
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informal messy
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of scrubby
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.
See Examples For:
Kharg Island, a scrubby stretch of land in the northern Gulf, handles almost all of Iran's crude exports and any attempt to seize it would mark a major escalation in the conflict, analysts say.
From Barron's ● Mar. 11, 2026
Should I use precious column inches teasing out the scrubby understeer of a Toyota Sienna minivan?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2025
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.
From BBC ● Jan. 5, 2025
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.
From Salon ● Oct. 20, 2024
“Lost? Us? Shoot, we’re on this scrubby patch of dirt on this hillside. Maybe we don’t know where exactly this hillside is, but I’m sure we’ll be fine, just fine.”
From "Ruby Holler" by Sharon Creech
The hills on both sides of the river grew loftier and more rugged as we ran to the south, and the trees became patchier and scrubbier.
From Down the Columbia by Lewis R. (Lewis Ransome) Freeman
Up, up, he went, and the pines grew shorter and scrubbier.
From The Last of the Chiefs A Story of the Great Sioux War by Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler
Trees and brush were scarcer and scrubbier than above, and the general aspect was becoming more and more like the semi-arid parts of the Colorado Desert.
From Down the Columbia by Lewis R. (Lewis Ransome) Freeman
Everybody’s got to start somewhere, and in 2002, Harbaugh was at the bottom of the food chain in Oakland — the scrubbiest of scrubs, despite the title of quarterbacks coach.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 12, 2025
Every fetishized element — the glorious house, the tiled pool, Marianne’s Dior outfits and the scrubbiest of vistas — looks ravishing, ready for a close-up, too.
From New York Times ● May 3, 2016
As for your solution of "... a wider attempt to breed better-grade cattle with less waste . . ." one would assume that we are still marketing the scrubbiest of the old Longhorns.
From Time Magazine Archive
“I hope I don’t pick the scrubbiest one.”
From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls
And go and hire the smallest, scrubbiest, toughest pair of horses you can find.”
From The Romance of the Reaper by Herbert Newton Casson
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.
