Scraggly means thin, ragged and growing unevenly. A scraggly beard, scraggly bushes, scraggly and thin.
It is affectionate about beards and dismissive about plants, and the unevenness is the point — a scraggly hedge has gaps. It is chiefly American, where British English says straggly. Note scrag, meaning a thin bony piece, as in scrag end of lamb.
1adjectivescragglyThin, ragged and growing unevenly.
“He had a scraggly beard that he clearly hadn't trimmed in weeks.”
synonyms: straggly, sparse
scraggly is a quality of raggedness.
Scrag plus -le plus -ly. Scrag means a thin bony piece, as in scrag end.
As if from a verb scraggle (in turn from scrag). Equivalent to scrag + -le + -ly.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA