scraggy
adj/ˈskɹæɡi/
1
Rough and irregular; jagged.
- Her tender arms the angry sharpness rue Of many a scraggy thorn and envious brier;c. 1890, William Dean Howells, Tennyson, stanza 18:
- [H]e grasped the rock. It was scraggy, and though it tore and bruised him he clung to it.1894, Gilbert Parker, chapter 10, in The Trail of The Sword:
2
Lean or thin, scrawny.
- 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.1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], chapter 2, in Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], →OCLC:
- He is twenty years younger, but has something of the same spare, scraggy physique.1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
- Derived terms
- scraggily, scragginess