scrabbly

adjective12

1. •
   Characterised by scrabbling, or digging around.

   • Once they were young and little and rather "scrabbly." They were given to loud laughter, to whispers, to scribbling pictures, and to mischievous glances. — 1961
2. •
   Thrown together; disorganized or slapdash.

   • He had to learn to climb a ship's rigging; spend many hours aloft, sometimes in bad weather; scrub decks; risk his life chasing whales; eat scrabbly food; sleep in a dank, crowded forecastle. — 1990
3. •
   Of poor quality; poorly maintained.

   • He remembered it well — the scrabbly coloured boats, drawn on to the shingle, painted and chipped with religious legends, the big kerosene lamps, the black nets. — 1965
4. •
   Impoverished, hardscrabble

   • He's living west of the river with George Gharboneaux and his sister Marie on that scrabbly little thing George calls a ranch. — 2004
5. •
   Characterized by sparse, stunted vegetation, infertile.

   • The warm climate must make those qualities grow as abundantly as the vegetation — and all from a scrabbly soil. — 2000
6. •
   Stunted.

   • We followed a well-worn trail that led across windswept slopes, punctuated with scrabbly vegetation and weathered boulders and dotted with occasional stone-and-mud huts with thatched roofs. — 2006
7. •
   Sparse and scraggly.

   • Seen in the darkness, it was that of an evil-looking, thick-set savage, with a forbidding countenance dotted unevenly with scrabbly wisps of beard. — 1906
8. •
   Covered in loose rocks or crumbling soil.

   • My mount struggled up the last few feet of scrabbly rock. — 1968
9. •
   Having a rough texture; scratchy.

   • I 'd hate to feel their scrabbly feet, wouldn't you? — 1916
10. •
    Difficult to negotiate; requiring scrambling.

    • The button was a bit awkward for some people's thumbs - big, beefy thumbs found it on the small side, while long, elegant nails found it rather scrabbly. — 1966
11. •
    Rough, poor and uncultured.

    • It was such a blessing that there were other beings beside hard, scrabbly, warring men, people who need not be afraid to be soft, women with pretty eyes. — 1936
12. •
    Scribbly.

    • The lines of the devices were very scrabbly, and the blue was muddy, and the red was a streaky pink, and Eddy looked very doubtfully at them — 1907

adjective1

1. •
   Characterized by unusual letters (those that have a high score in the game Scrabble).

   • Amy Reynaldo, the Crossword Fiend blogger, labels the richest alphabetical specimens as Scrabbly, an adjective I'm happy to spread. — 2012