different between scraggliness vs scraggly

English

Etymology

scraggly +? -ness

Noun

scraggliness (uncountable)

1. Roughness, scruffiness, or unkemptness.
   • 2002 April 5, Charles McGrath, "Rituals: Great Ways to Wreck A Quiet Weekend," New York Times (retrieved 20 Sep. 2011):

     The great thing about mowing is that it is visually satisfying; with each overlapping pass, one more swath is shorn, and where there was once scraggliness and unkemptness, now there is neatness and trimness.

   • 2002 April 18, Hollywood's Such a Mess These Days: Left and right, stars wear their hear unkept, Lexington Herald-Leader, p. E3 (retrieved 20 Sep. 2011):

     Ditto for Uma Thurman, whose loose blonde strands were defiant in their scraggliness. Your mother would have called this kind of hair a bird's nest.

   • 2004, Carla Neggers, White Hot, ?ISBN, p. 195:

     He was dressed casually, expensively, a contrast to his older brother's ragged, threadbare clothes and general scraggliness.

English

Etymology

As if from a verb *scraggle (in turn from scrag).

Adjective

scraggly (comparative scragglier, superlative scraggliest)

1. Rough, scruffy, or unkempt.
   • 1913, Jack London, John Barleycorn, ch. 31:

     The sunburn of my face, what little of it could be seen through a scraggly growth of beard, had faded to a sickly yellow.

   • 1980 Nov. 24, John Skow, "In Arizona: A Million Dollar Sale of Cowboy Art," Time:

     What he painted was scenes of the Old West, cowboys and Indians, cattle and horses. Pictures scraggly with sagebrush.

2. Jagged or uneven; scraggy.
   • 1916, Annie Fellows Johnston, Georgina of the Rainbows, ch. 24:

     She would be so happy . . . that she wouldn't notice the spelling or the scraggly writing.

   • 2001 Sep. 7, Christopher John Farley, "At the MTV Awards: Redheads and Circuses," Time:

     "I have no idea," the young woman said, checking over the scraggly illegible signature the mystery woman had left her in her autograph book.

Derived terms

• scraggliness

Translations