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.
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Holding a glass jug, Jorge Velazco Rocha crouches before a contraption of wooden barrels stacked in cascading fashion at his roadside tavern along the scrubby flanks of the Volcán de Colima.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 24, 2026
Known as "the jungle", the camp is a scrubby patch of land beside a road and a railway line.
From BBC ● May 18, 2026
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
To reach Australia’s pole in 2022, Brown flew to a town in the interior desert, rented a 4X4 and off-roaded across scrubby ranchland.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 23, 2026
“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
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 Freeman, Lewis R. (Lewis Ransome)
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 Freeman, Lewis R. (Lewis Ransome)
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 Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
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
Honest to God, Saxon, he don't like all his horses as much as I like the last hair on the last tail of the scrubbiest of the bunch.
From The Valley of the Moon by London, Jack
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.
