scraggly

comparative scragglier · superlative scraggliest

1. Rough, scruffy, or unkempt.

   What he painted was scenes of the Old West, cowboys and Indians, cattle and horses. Pictures scraggly with sagebrush.

   1980 November 24, John Skow, “In Arizona: A Million Dollar Sale of Cowboy Art”, in Time

   2 more examples

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

   1913 August, Jack London, chapter XXXI, in John Barleycorn, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC, page 280

   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."

   1963, J P Donleavy, A Singular Man, published 1963 (USA), page 24

2. Jagged or uneven; scraggy.

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

   1916, Annie Fellows Johnston, chapter 24, in Georgina of the Rainbows

   2 more examples

   "I have no idea," the young woman said, checking over the scraggly illegible signature the mystery woman had left her in her autograph book.

   2001 September 7, Christopher John Farley, “At the MTV Awards: Redheads and Circuses”, in Time

   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.

   2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 285