Scraggly

//ˈskɹæɡ(ə)li// adj

adj ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Rough, scruffy, or unkempt.

    "The sunburn of my face, what little of it could be seen through a scraggly growth of beard, had faded to a sickly yellow."

  2. 2
    Jagged or uneven; scraggy.

    "She would be so happy . . . that she wouldn't notice the spelling or the scraggly writing."

Adjective
  1. 1
    being very thin wordnet
  2. 2
    ragged, thin, or untidy in appearance wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
untidybeat upbeat-upbedraggledblowzyboney

Example

More examples

"He has a scraggly beard and a bum leg."

Etymology

As if from a verb *scraggle (in turn from scrag). Equivalent to scrag + -le + -ly.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.