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Scrappy   /skrˈæpi/   Listen
Scrappy

adjective
1.
Full of fighting spirit.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Scrappy" Quotes from Famous Books



... this is too serious a matter to quarrel over," admonished Ruth, but smiling because her chum showed, after all, interest enough in the young man to be "scrappy." "What do you suppose ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... given up expecting to hear from her, he received a telegram of forty words of utter nonsense, in which she addressed him in little familiar terms, and asked "if they were still fond of each other." Then, after nearly a year's silence, there came a scrappy letter scrawled in her enormous childish zigzag writing, in which she tried to play the lady,—a few affectionate, droll words. And there she left it. She did not forget him, but she had no time to think ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... scientific biography. The preservation of official records makes it possible for the modern scholar to reconstruct with considerable fullness the careers of public men; but in the case of Shakespeare, as of others of his profession, we must needs be content with a few scrappy documents, supplemented by oral traditions of varying degrees of authenticity. About Shakespeare himself it must be allowed that we have been able to learn more than about most of his ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... paragraph is ordinarily from fifty to three hundred words, depending on the importance or complexity of the thought. In exposition, the paragraphs should be long enough to develop every idea thoroughly. Scrappy expository paragraphs arouse the suspicion that the writer is incoherent, or that he has not given sufficient thought to the subject. Short paragraphs are permissible, and even desirable, ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever

... quite patiently to Menecreta's tale. His sun-tanned face clearly showed how hard he was trying to gather up the tangled threads of her scrappy narrative. Nor did the lictors this time try to interfere with the woman. The praefect apparently was in no easy temper to-day, and when ill-humour seized him rods and flails ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to him. He ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these days of disturbing letters from home, where things were not going well. But with my children, what things in the world mattered? That was the question I used to put to my scrappy retirements. I was ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James

... with the rags of dusty spider-webs; further away the fruitless orchards looked as if they had been burnt with fire, and, stretching to the horizon, as far as the eye could reach, the arid corn-fields had the appearance of being covered with nothing but scrappy stubble. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... exception of the Second colours. Armour had never felt so nervous before; it was actually the first time he had refereed on a game. Jeffries was captain of the Thirds, and kicked off. It was, of course, a scrappy game. On such a day good football was impossible. The outsides hardly touched the ball once. But the forwards, covered in mud from head to foot, had their full share of work. Jeffries was ubiquitous; he led ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... little from another. Up at dawn, and off after the scantiest of scrappy breakfasts. Good marching while the dew was on the grass, and the sun a welcome ally after the clear, crisp, frosty nights; soon, however, to get hot enough, until the welcome mid-day halt and meal, after which tighten up belts once more and on, and on, one horizon following another with ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... as scrappy and as hurried as lunch had been: a class of working-men was momently expected, and Robby had just time to gulp down a cup of tea. Nor could he converse; for he was ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... of Munster. Meyerbeer's music, fine as much of it is, suffers chiefly from the character of the libretto. The latter is merely a string of conventionally effective scenes, and the music could hardly fail to be disjointed and scrappy. Meyerbeer had little or no feeling for characterisation, so that the opportunities for really dramatic effect which lay in the character of John of Leyden have been almost entirely neglected. Once only, in the famous cantique 'Roi du Ciel,' did the composer catch an echo of the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... friend of mine used to have to mix with them quite a lot, poor fellah! He used to say they was none of them truly refined. And this kid takes after his pop, eh? Kind of scrappy ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... curious and unexpected shapes, rise from the gloomy desert of the plain. Yet, though the Karroo looks a hopeless wilderness, flocks of sheep at distant intervals—one sheep requires six hundred acres of this scrappy pasture for nourishment—manage to subsist; and in consequence, now and again the traveller sees some ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... the chaff into his wastebasket and retaining a few kernels for later use. He seemed thoroughly familiar with the state press and spoke of the rural newspapers with a respect that surprised Harwood, who had little patience with what he called the "grapevine dailies," with their scrappy local news, patent insides, and servile partisan opinions. Still, he began to find in a considerable number of these papers, even those emanating from remote county seats, a certain raciness and independence. This ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... bored him unutterably; and indeed he was incapable of caring for any woman (however feebly) for more than two or three weeks. He was particularly fickle, vague, and scrappy in his emotions. Edith was the only woman for whom even a little affection could last, and he would have long tired of her but for her exceptional character and the extraordinary trouble and tact she used with him. He didn't appreciate her fine ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... of the intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that alleged demonstration; it is in an enormous accumulation of small but unanimous facts. The secularist is not to be blamed because his objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and even scrappy; it is precisely such scrappy evidence that does convince the mind. I mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend. The very fact that the things are ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... not always furnish the data which are of most importance for the history of Buddhism. Still there is no better framework available for arranging our data. But even were our information much fuller, we should probably find the history of Central Asia scrappy and disconnected. Its cities were united by no bond of common blood or language, nor can any one of them have had a continuous development in institutions, letters or art. These were imported in a mature form and more or less assimilated ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... And as for scaring the tough ones, he might be the strongest and toughest and scrappiest and quickest lad on his feet that ever was, but out there in that quarrying town would be a dozen or twenty or fifty just as strong and as quick and as scrappy as himself. And that kind—which was his kind—you might set them up in a row and knock them down one after another, and just as fast as one went down another would come bouncing up for the honor of ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... one had a right to denounce the English as wrong. Artistically their mind was scrappy, and every one knew it, but perhaps thought itself, history, and nature, were scrappy, and ought to be studied so. Turning from British art to British literature, one met the same dangers. The historical school was a playground of ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... rooms she noted their forlorn, dishevelled appearance, which all places show when seen at an unaccustomed hour, their time of activity and bustle past. The rooms were littered with torn papers; waste-baskets overflowing; looking silent, scrappy, and abandoned in the grey morning light which seemed intrusive, usurping the place of the usual artificial illumination, and betraying a bareness which the other concealed. Jennie recognized a relationship between her own up-all-night feeling and the spirit of the ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... for dear life to the shrubs, he waited for me to save him. Such a torture I have never known, or shall know again. The sight of my friend, not ten feet away from me, the precipice forbidding me to go down, for it was quite sheer at the top; his white face, his desperate hold at the scrappy shrubs—oh, you can't imagine or think of the truth of it as I had ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton



Words linked to "Scrappy" :   aggressive, scrappiness, scrap



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