scraggly
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]As if from a verb *scraggle (in turn from scrag). Equivalent to scrag + -le + -ly.
Pronunciation
[edit]- IPA(key): /ˈskɹæɡ(ə)li/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
Adjective
[edit]scraggly (comparative scragglier, superlative scraggliest)
- Rough, scruffy, or unkempt.
- 1913 August, Jack London, chapter XXXI, in John Barleycorn, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC, page 280:
- The sunburn of my face, what little of it could be seen through a scraggly growth of beard, had faded to a sickly yellow.
- 1963, J P Donleavy, A Singular Man, published 1963 (USA), page 24:
- Faintly from the street scraggly children's voices singing a yule song. Miss Tomson going to the window.
"Hey come here Mr Smith look at this, isn't that sweet, group of urchins, they're singing."
- 1980 November 24, John Skow, “In Arizona: A Million Dollar Sale of Cowboy Art”, in Time:
- What he painted was scenes of the Old West, cowboys and Indians, cattle and horses. Pictures scraggly with sagebrush.
- Jagged or uneven; scraggy.
- 1916, Annie Fellows Johnston, chapter 24, in Georgina of the Rainbows:
- She would be so happy . . . that she wouldn't notice the spelling or the scraggly writing.
- 2001 September 7, Christopher John Farley, “At the MTV Awards: Redheads and Circuses”, in Time:
- "I have no idea," the young woman said, checking over the scraggly illegible signature the mystery woman had left her in her autograph book.
- 2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 285:
- I climbed to a small ridge under a fiercely blazing sun and sat down under a scraggly gum tree to try and work out my bearings.