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:
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
Should I use precious column inches teasing out the scrubby understeer of a Toyota Sienna minivan?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 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
We drew close to a ramshackle house and garage on a scrubby plot of land.
From "The Season of Styx Malone" by Kekla Magoon
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
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
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
In the next place, Kinroy suggested to his friends to go for a lark to South Beach, which was one of the poorest and scrubbiest of all the beaches on Staten Island.
From The "Genius" by Theodore Dreiser
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