Meaning & use

scrappy

adjective·Everyday

Determined and willing to fight hard despite being at a disadvantage; also, made up of disorganized or incomplete odds and ends.

See it in a sentence

The scrappy underdog team fought back from a huge deficit to win the championship.

He left behind only a scrappy collection of notes, making it hard to reconstruct his research.

A note on using this word

In sports and competition, "scrappy" praises grit and fighting spirit; applied to work or objects, it instead suggests messiness or incompleteness.

Words with a similar meaning

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Words with an opposite meaning

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