English

Adjective

scraggy ‎(comparative scraggier, superlative scraggiest)

1. Rough and irregular; jagged.
   • c. 1890, William Dean Howells, Tennyson, stanza 18:

     Her tender arms the angry sharpness rue

     Of many a scraggy thorn and envious brier;

   • 1894, Gilbert Parker, The Trail of The Sword. ch. 10:

     [H]e grasped the rock. It was scraggy, and though it tore and bruised him he clung to it.

2. Lean or thin, scrawny.
   • 1815, Sir Walter Scott, Guy Mannering, ch. 2:

     On one of these occasions, he presented for the first time to Mannering his tall, gaunt, awkward, bony figure, attired in a threadbare suit of black, with a coloured handkerchief, not over clean, about his sinewy, scraggy neck.

Derived terms

• scraggily
• scragginess

References

• scraggy at OneLook Dictionary Search