scruffy

comparative scruffier · superlative scruffiest

1. Untidy in appearance; scrubby; shabby.

   scruffy man

   5 more examples

   A scruffy little dog came scampering down the road.

   scruffy clothes

   scruffy outfit

   "So you wanna be a rock 'n roll star?!" screams the centerspread of a scruffy rag produced by the Boston activist group Rock Against Sexism (R.A.S.) Amid a jumbled collage picturing shaggy-headed, bare-chested, "fuckin' awesome" white guy rockers, photo captions tell us how to succeed at rock 'n roll.

   1987 December 13, Elizabeth Pincus, “Rock Against Sexism”, in Gay Community News, volume 15, number 22, page 16

   And I will think of my father, sun-baked, scruffy and far from home, stalking the wilds of Clapham Common, saved from a dinner of roasted aesculin by people who knew the importance of making someone feel at home.

   2025 December 24, Nell Frizzell, “When my father first came to the UK, people bonded and looked after him. Would that happen now?”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 25 Dec 2025

2. Scurfy.

plural scruffies

1. informalAn artificial intelligence researcher who believes that intelligence is too complicated (or computationally intractable) to be solved with the sorts of homogeneous system favoured by the "neats".
2. slangAlaskaAn arctic fox.

   For quotations using this term, see Citations:scruffy.

1. A given name for a dog.