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• scarry
  scarry

  adjective

  marked with the scars of wounds.
• Scarry
  Scarry

  noun

  Richard McClure, 1919–94, U.S. author and illustrator of children's books.

scarry

¹ American  

[skahr-ee] / ˈskɑr i /

adjective

scarrier, scarriest

1. marked with the scars of wounds.

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scarry ² American  

[skahr-ee] / ˈskɑr i /

adjective

1. full of precipitous, rocky places.

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Scarry ³ American  

[skahr-ee] / ˈskɑr i /

noun

1. Richard McClure, 1919–94, U.S. author and illustrator of children's books.

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Etymology

Origin of scarry¹

First recorded in 1645–55; scar ¹ + -y ¹

Origin of scarry²

Middle English word dating back to 1350–1400; see origin at scar ², -y ¹

Example Sentences

In that past she has invoked Lowly Worm, the Richard Scarry children’s book character, to walk through how tariffs ripple into inflation.

From Barron's • Mar. 13, 2026

The exhibition also includes murals featuring familiar childhood imagery: One is an illustration of an enormous traffic accident by children’s book author Richard Scarry.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 16, 2026

“It is when a country has become to its population a fiction that wars begin,” Elaine Scarry writes in The Body in Pain, “however intensely beloved that fiction is.”

From Slate • Sep. 11, 2021

As Ms. Scarry writes, “Physical pain … obliterates all psychological content, painful, pleasurable and neutral.”

From New York Times • Jul. 16, 2021

However it had come about, poor Scarry had indubitably been put into the earth face downward.

From The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians by Bierce, Ambrose