scruffy, a.
(ˈskrʌfɪ)
[f. scruff n.1 + -y.]
a. Scaly, covered with scurf.
| 1660 Howell Parly of Beasts 76 The Serpent goes to Fenell when he would..cast off his old scruffy skin to wear a new one. 1841 Lever C. O'Malley xxx, Every man, woman, and child has a brown, scruffy, turf-like face. 1885 U.S. Cons. Report No. lviii. 150 (Cent.) The sheep [in South Africa] becomes scruffy and emaciated. |
b. Shabby, mean, dirty; slovenly, messy, untidy. Also Comb., as scruffy-looking adj.
| 1871 ‘Mark Twain’ Screamers ii. 16 When he'd got the blues, and feel kind o' scruffy, aggravated, and disgusted..he would curl up..and go to sleep. 1925 Fraser & Gibbons Soldier & Sailor Words 253 Scruffy, dirty: slovenly: untidy in appearance. 1931 Star 8 May 6/3 Anyone who has travelled through lottery countries and seen the hundreds of scruffy ticket-shops in the cities. 1935 Punch 5 June 656/1 ‘Mine,’ said the scruffy-looking chap who had started by borrowing a match, ‘is a tragedy of jealousy.’ 1940 Blunden Poems 1930–40 204 While I leisured it so, from the verge of the street Those scruffy old weeds in a flash had me beat. 1951 Auden Nones (1952) 29 A rather scruffy-looking god Descends in a machine. 1958 Times Lit. Suppl. 16 May 274/1 Always late, crumpled and scruffy, perpetually in debt, hourly expecting the sack, Greare takes refuge..in Mittyesque fantasies. 1967 A. N. Sherwin-White Racial Prejudice in Imperial Rome i. 4 It is because they..live..in a scruffy fashion, following the impulses and necessities of beasts. 1974 N. Freeling Dressing of Diamond 122 His chin was badly shaved: it gave him a dirty look, and sort of scruffy. |
Hence ˈscruffily adv.; ˈscruffiness.
| 1974 Times 5 Oct. 13 That general ‘scruffiness’ could easily be rectified. 1977 Listener 4 Aug. 145/2 Making herself look scruffily bizarre is a time-consuming business. |