Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use scrawny in a sentence

19 example sentences · adjective

Scrawny means thin, malnourished, and weak. Example: “The tree's leaflessness made it look scrawny, though in summer it seemed full and bushy.”

Examples of scrawny by meaning

adjectiveThin, malnourished, and weak.

  • “Tell him, in these words, that I will have his scrawny bones before me now.1992, Robert Jordan, “Chapter 31: Assurances”, in The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time; 4), London: Orbit Books, published 2021, →ISBN...

More sentences with scrawny

  • The tree's leaflessness made it look scrawny, though in summer it seemed full and bushy.From the entry leaflessness
  • The boys whose averageness is marked by their especially pale-skinned, scrawny, and nerdish appearances.2015, Jane Ward, Not Gay, New York University Press, →ISBN, page 184. From the entry nerdish
  • It was a scrawny little thing, not much to look at.2010, Delilah Scott, Emma Troy, “’Tis Better to Give … Or Why Beauty is in the Eye of the Gift Giver”, in The Upside-down Christmas Tree…. From the entry Charlie Brown Christmas tree
  • He's getting too flaquito, nena, all scrawny like Marc Anthony with his manorexia chiseling up his face.2008, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, Dirty Girls on Top, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN. From the entry manorexia
  • She was wearing only panties and bra, which did nothing to make her scrawny, wrinkled body appealing.1968, Carl Ruhen, The Key Club, Sydney: Scripts, page 12. From the entry bra
  • He's a scrawny gaum of a lad named Tony Regan, the tailor's eldest son.1946, Liam O'Flaherty, Land, →ISBN. From the entry gaum
  • The men were either fat and middle-aged or young and scrawny with a fine display of pimples.1946, Patrick Quentin [pseudonym; Richard Wilson Webb and Hugh Callingham Wheeler], Love Is a Deadly Weapon, New York, N.Y.: Pocket Books…. From the entry outdoorsiness
  • He pulled up his sleeve and there on his scrawny arm hung a Rolex the size of Big Ben.2015, Dorothea Benton Frank, Carolina Girls. From the entry Big Ben
  • Yet this big, scrawny drink of water out in the field by himself seemed to be hoofing it along absolutely fine.2015, Jenny T. Colgan, Resistance Is Futile, →ISBN. From the entry scrawny drink of water
  • A scrawny man with long, matted hair shuffled forward.2011, Chris Nickson, Broken Token. From the entry beggars' velvet
  • On the yellow silk sofa, scrawny Hepzibah made a misstitch on her sampler, and Mother Prudence made her take it out.2010, Marion Moore Hill, Deadly Will. From the entry misstitch
  • She was, as girls go, scrawny and muscular, yet her boyish frame had in the last year betrayed her.1991, Katherine Paterson, Lyddie. From the entry go
  • He was quivering in the corner, a nasty, scrawny, Gollumesque type creature, scared, spitting, snarling, panting, knowing I was on the attack, a cornered beast!2009, Ben Gander, OCD & ME, Gander Publications, page 141. From the entry Gollumesque
  • He was a scrawny sort, not over seventeen, with pimples in the corners of his lips and hair the color of mopwater.2004, Joe Jackson, How I Left the Great State of Tennessee and Went on to Better Things, page 39. From the entry mopwater
  • Look what she bought me for a wedding present!” He pulled up his sleeve and there on his scrawny arm hung a Rolex the size of Big Ben.2015, Dorothea Benton Frank, Carolina Girls. From the entry ganjapreneur
  • The larch, looking like a scrawny spruce or fir, is unusual for a conifer: it deciduates in the fall , the needles turning yellow before they drop.2007, Jerome Malitz, Susan Malitz, Acadia National Park Dayhiker's Guide: Maine's Coastal Gem, page 9. From the entry deciduate
  • I had to collect up all the scrawny dead birds with their swollen blind eyes, throw them into a barrow and take them to the boilerhouse for burning.2004, Andrea Levy, chapter 23, in Small Island, London: Review, page 244. From the entry boilerhouse
  • The scrawny patroler of Hall Township was called “Cracklin’ Jack” Parker, and the large muscular fellow of the Bear Garden area near Sarem in Reynoldson Township, “Bear Garden Jack” Parker.1965, Frank Roy Johnson, Tales from Old Carolina: Traditional and Historical Sketches of the Area Between and about the Chowan River and…. From the entry patroler

Meaning of scrawny

  1. adjective Thin, malnourished, and weak.

Full definition of scrawny

Questions about scrawny in a sentence

How do you use scrawny in a sentence?
Scrawny is used as an adjective. For example: “The tree's leaflessness made it look scrawny, though in summer it seemed full and bushy.”
What is a short sentence with scrawny?
“A scrawny man with long, matted hair shuffled forward.”
What does scrawny mean?
Scrawny means thin, malnourished, and weak.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scrawny (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use scrawny in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/scrawny. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.