scruff
noun /skrʌf/
/skrʌf/
Idioms - (British English, informal) a dirty or untidy personWord Originnoun early 16th cent. (in the sense ‘flakes of skin’): variant of scurf ‘flakes of skin’. The word came to mean ‘worthless thing’, whence the current sense (mid 19th cent.).
Idioms
by the scruff of the/somebody’s neck
- roughly holding the back of an animal’s or person’s neck
- She grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and threw him out.
- The cat picked up her kitten by the scruff of its neck.