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scrawny

UK/ˈskɹɔːni/US/ˈskɹɔni/
adjectiveC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,744 of 15,258mostly spoken

Scrawny means unhealthily thin and bony. A scrawny cat, scrawny arms, looking scrawny.

It is unkind: slim is a compliment, thin is neutral, and scrawny suggests undernourishment and a certain awkwardness. It suits animals, chickens and adolescents. Skinny is the milder everyday word and scraggy the near-synonym. Note that scrawny is chiefly American in origin and now general; and that it is a variant of dialect scranny, from a family of words about being meagre.

Definitions of scrawny

  1. 1adjectivescrawnyUnhealthily thin and bony.C1

    “The stray cat was scrawny and hungry, so we gave it some fish.”

    synonyms: skinny, bony

scrawny is a quality of thinness.

Where it comes from

It is a variant of dialectal scranny, meaning thin or poor, possibly from Old Norse skran, rubbish. Scrannel, meaning meagre, is from the same family and survives only in Milton.

  1. Old Norse

    skran — rubbish; junk

  2. English, today

    scrawny

Built from

  • scranny · English — thin; lean; scraggy; poor; scanty; of inferior quality

A variant of dialectal scranny (“thin; lean; scraggy; poor; scanty; of inferior quality”), perhaps from Old Norse skran (“rubbish; junk”) y. Compare Norwegian skran (“lean, thin, skinny”), English scrannel (“lean; meager; poor; worthless”). Alternatively, perhaps from Old Norse skrælna (“to be shrivelled”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

scrawny in the wild

  • When Hunter first arrived to play in the VFL, many questioned whether his style of play would stand up to the physical pressure, given his scrawny build.

    Ken Hunter

  • Ren is a scrawny, emotionally unstable and psychotic "Asthma Hound" Chihuahua and his best friend Stimpy is a dim-witted, but good-natured Manx cat.

    Ren and Stimpy (characters)

  • A music video had been filmed for the song displaying a rather scrawny young boy who does not seem to add up to his father's expectations.

    Family Tradition (Senses Fail song)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.