scrubby

American  

[skruhb-ee] / ˈskrʌb i /

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.

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scrubby British  

/ ˈskrʌbɪ /

adjective

1. covered with or consisting of scrub

2. (of trees or vegetation) stunted in growth

3. informal messy

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Other Word Forms

• scrubbily adverb
• scrubbiness noun

Etymology

Origin of scrubby

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.

From Literature

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

From Los Angeles Times

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.

From Los Angeles Times

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

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