scroggy adj.

1540s, "lean person or animal, a raw-bones;" perhaps from a Scandinavian source (compare Norwegian skragg "a lean person;" dialectal Swedish skraka "a great, dry tree; a long, lean man," skragge "old and torn thing," Danish skrog "hull of a ship; carcass," Icelandic skröggr, a nickname of the fox); perhaps from the same source as shrink.

By 1640s as "lean end of a cut of meat," hence "neck" (18c.) and thence a range of slang verbal terms for "to strangle, to hang; to kill" in 19c.-20c.

"having a rough, irregular, or ragged appearance," 1831, from scrag + -ly (1); also compare scraggy (13c.). Scraggling in the same sense is by 1722; Milton used scragged (attested from 1590s).

early 13c., scraggi, "rough, jagged" (figurative); 1570s, of landscape, "rough, rugged, stumpy;" 1610s, of persons or animals, "gaunt and wasted, lean, thin, bony;" see scrag (n.) + -y (2), and compare scroggy, scraggly, scrawny. In the landscape sense perhaps via scrag in the obsolete sense of "stump of a tree, rough projection from a trunk" (1560s), which had various spellings. In Scottish and Northern English, scranky "lean, slender, scraggy" (18c.). Related: Scraggily; scragginess.