different between scraggly vs rugged

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

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English rugged, roggyd, ruggyd, derived from Old Norse r?gg (“tuft, shagginess”), equivalent to rug (“rough, woollen material”) +? -ed. Compare Old Swedish ruggoter (“wrinkled”), Swedish rugga (“to roughen”), Swedish ruggig (“shaggy”), Icelandic rögg (“shagginess”), Old Norse raggaðr (“tufted”), dialectal Danish raggad (“shaggy”).

Pronunciation

• r?-g?d, IPA^(key): /?????d/

Adjective

rugged (comparative ruggeder, superlative ruggedest)

1. Broken into sharp or irregular points; uneven; not smooth; rough.
   • 1870, Mark Twain, Roughing It, Chapter LXV

     By and by, after a rugged climb, we halted on the summit of a hill which commanded a far-reaching view.

2. Not neat or regular; irregular, uneven.
   • 2011, Ronke Luke-Boone, African Fabrics: Sewing Contemporary Fashion with Ethic Flair

     Commercially produced yarn, such as rayon, produces a cloth with a smoother, shinier look than hand-spun cotton, but the uneven, rugged look of hand-spun cotton can be quite appealing.

3. Rough with bristles or hair; shaggy.
4. (of a person) Strong, sturdy, well-built.
   • 2010, Arthur Queen Jr., Young Man: Ageless Fatherly Wisdom to Hold

     Many women and men delude themselves into thinking that only the hardest and most rugged man is attractive and to many it may be the case.

5. (of land) Rocky and bare of plantlife.
   • 2013, Vicky Baker in The Guardian, Riding with the cowboys on a Mexico ranch

     Hidden within 30,000 acres of rugged private land, the ranch is cocooned by peaks and canyons in all directions.
6. (of temper, character, or people) Harsh; austere; hard; crabbed
7. Stormy; turbulent; tempestuous; rude.
8. (of sound, style etc.) Harsh; grating; rough to the ear
9. (of looks, appearance etc.) Sour; surly; frowning; wrinkled
10. (of behaviour) Violent; rude; boisterous
11. (of health, physique etc.) Vigorous; robust; hardy
    • 1909, Jack London, Martin Eden

      "Her gaze rested for a moment on the muscular neck, heavy corded, almost bull-like, bronzed by the sun, spilling over with rugged health and strength..."

12. (computing, of a computer) Designed to reliably operate in harsh usage environments and conditions.
    • 2011, Nick Fletcher, Psion drops 2% after supply chain issues push it into loss

      Psion, which supplies a range of rugged hand held computers, has lost nearly 2% after announcing a plunge into the red.

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• rugged in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• rugged at OneLook Dictionary Search

Etymology 2

rug +? -ed

Pronunciation

• r?gd, IPA^(key): /???d/

Adjective

rugged (not comparable)

1. Having a rug or rugs.
2. Covered with a rug.

Verb

rugged

1. simple past tense and past participle of rug

Anagrams

• Dugger, Gudger, grudge, gurged