Word.ws English Dictionary

scrawny

UK/ˈskɹɔːni//ˈskɹɔni/

scrawny adjective: thin, malnourished, and weak.

Adjective

scrawny (comparative scrawnier, superlative scrawniest)

  1. Thin, malnourished, and weak.
    • “Tell him, in these words, that I will have his scrawny bones before me now. Tell him, Byar, and bring him if you must arrest him and those filthy wretches who disgrace the Children. Go.”1992, Robert Jordan, “Chapter 31: Assurances”, in The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time; 4), London: Orbit Books, published 2021, →ISBN, page 498

scrawny meaning in Malayalam, Kannada, Arabic and Indonesian

scrawny in Malayalam

thin, skinny, as thin as a rake
മെല്ലിച്ച, എല്ലുന്തിയ, എല്ലും തോലുമായ, ശോഷിച്ച, മെലിഞ്ഞ, ക്ഷീണിച്ച

scrawny in Kannada

ಮೂಳೆ ಚಕ್ಕಳದಂತಿರುವ, ಸಣಕಲ, ನರಪೇತಲ, ಸಣಕಲು, ಬಡಕಲು

scrawny in Arabic

thin, malnourished and weak
هَزِيل hazīl, نَحِيل naḥīl

scrawny in Indonesian

thin, malnourished and weak
kerempeng

Examples of scrawny in a sentence

  • The tree's leaflessness made it look scrawny, though in summer it seemed full and bushy.
  • The boys whose averageness is marked by their especially pale-skinned, scrawny, and nerdish appearances.
  • It was a scrawny little thing, not much to look at.

All 19 example sentences with scrawny

Synonyms of scrawny

17 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of scrawny

Forms of scrawny

comparativescrawnier
superlativescrawniest
alternative form (dialectal)scranny

Origin of scrawny

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”).

Words formed from scrawny

Phrases with scrawny

Words that rhyme with scrawny

Questions about scrawny

What does scrawny mean?
Scrawny means thin, malnourished, and weak.
What is scrawny in Malayalam?
Scrawny in Malayalam is മെല്ലിച്ച, എല്ലുന്തിയ, എല്ലും തോലുമായ. See Scrawny meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is scrawny?
Scrawny is an adjective.
How do you pronounce scrawny?
Scrawny is pronounced /ˈskɹɔːni/ (UK).

Words near scrawny in the dictionary

  1. scrawn
  2. scrawnier
  3. scrawniest
  4. scrawnily
  5. scrawniness
  6. scrawny
  7. scrawny drink of water
  8. scrawny drinks of water
  9. scraws
  10. scray
  11. scraye

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scrawny (page history and authors); scrawny (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); scrawny (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-scrawny.ogg.

Cite this entry: “scrawny.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scrawny. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.