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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

scruffy.

Untidy in appearance; scrubby; shabby.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈskɹʌf.i/UK, US/ˈskɹaf.i/Australia
  1. Untidy in appearance; scrubby; shabby.

    A scruffy little dog came scampering down the road.
    scruffy clothes
  2. Scurfy.

Where this word comes from

Etymology tree English scruff Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English scruffy From scruff + -y.

noun/ˈskɹʌf.i/UK, US/ˈskɹaf.i/Australia
  1. An 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".

    informal
  2. An arctic fox.

    slang
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree English scruff Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English scruffy From scruff + -y.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.