"Here I am boxed up, like a scrubber in a pound, year after year."
1893. `The Argus,' April 29, p. 4, col. 4 (`Getting in the Scrubbers'):
"The scrubbers, unseen of men, would stay in their fastnesses all day chewing the cud they had laid up the night before, and when the sun went down and the strident laugh of the giant kingfisher had given place to the insidious air-piercing note of the large-mouthed podargus, the scrub would give up its inhabitants."
(2) A starved-looking or ill-bred animal.
(3) The word is sometimes applied to mankind in the slang sense of an "outsider." It is used in University circles as equivalent to the Oxford "smug," a man who will not join in the life of the place. See also <i>Bush-scrubber</i>.
1868. `Colonial Monthly,' vol. ii. p. 141 [art. `Peggy's Christening]:
"`I can answer for it, that they are scrubbers—to use a bush phrase—have never been brought within the pale of any church.'
"`Never been christened?' asked the priest.
"`Have no notion of it—scrubbers, sir—never been branded.'"
<hw>Scrubby</hw>, <i>adj</i>. belonging to, or resembling scrub.