scabby

From Middle English scabby, scabbie, equivalent to scab +‎ -y. Doublet of shabby.

• IPA^(key): /ˈskæb.i/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æbi

scabby (comparative scabbier, superlative scabbiest)

1. Affected with scabs; full of scabs.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “(please specify the book)”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     Her wrizled skin, as rough as maple rind,
     So scabby was, that would have loath'd all womankind.

2. Diseased with the scab (mange): mangy.
3. (printing) Having a blotched, uneven appearance.
4. Injured by the attachment of barnacles to the carapace of a shell.
5. Working against union policies, working to bust unions; in particular, being a scab (worker who crosses a union picket line).
   • 1990, Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s, University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 166:

     The police, the governor, and the "scabby" Hearst Examiner "received a tremendous razzing," according to the Waterfront Worker, while all along the line of march "the workers on the sidelines cheered […]"

   • 2016 August 31, David M. Caulfield, Ever a Fighter: The Adventures of Katherine Wilkinson, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN:

     [They're a] scabby right-to-work company and they don't care how much the sharp edges on that dust screw up a guy's lungs.

   • 2021 July 28, Michael F. McCarthy Colonel USAF (Ret), Memories of a Jane Street Boy: Family Influences and The Early Years, Dorrance Publishing, →ISBN, page 295:

     Hoochie's dad said, “All eight drivers are former 'scabby' employees who couldn't get hired by any reputable union trucking companies.”

6. (Ireland, slang) Stingy.

   The chipper was a bit scabby on the vinegar today.

• (affected with scabs): reef, scabrous; see also Thesaurus:scabby

• scabbily
• scabbiness
• scabby sheep

• “scabby”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “scabby”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.