scruff

Updated: May 21, 2025

As fast as Mimmy makes swords, Siegfried Bakoonin smashes them, and then takes the poor old swordsmith by the scruff of the neck and chastises him wrathfully. The particular day on which the curtain rises begins with one of these trying domestic incidents. Mimmy has just done his best with a new sword of surpassing excellence.

Bernard Shaw - The Perfect Wagnerite, Commentary on the Ring

"That sounds like Harrison street station, don't it? Give 'em two days to get out of town. They make me sick!" "So they're all centering around this little old ex-aqueduct," George said. "In about five minutes the two sheriffs'll be crawling into this old drain and taking the train robbers by the scruff of the neck."

Archibald Lee Fletcher - Boy Scouts on the Great Divide: or, The Ending of the Trail

There was a fan-shaped light over the door, and the place was very still and gray. A quick thought, or rather a sudden prophetic guess at the truth, made me turn to the figure of the mastiff curled under the hall table. I laid my hand on the scruff of his neck. He was quite limp, and my fingers sank into the flesh on either side of the vertebrae.

Various - McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896

And when he lectured her, and warned her to be careful and take no notice of men who tried to speak to her, Louise only laughed. When Klaus Brock came up one day to visit them, and made great play with his eyes while he talked to her, Peer felt much inclined to take him by the scruff of the neck and throw him downstairs.

Johan Bojer - The Great Hunger

Then an idea struck me. "I wonder, my dear Lola, whether you could apply that curious power you have over savage animals to the taming of the more brutal of humans." "I wonder," she said thoughtfully. "I should like to see you seize a drunken costermonger in the act of jumping on his wife by the scruff of the neck, and reduce him to such pulp that he sat up on his tail and begged."

William John Locke - Simon the Jester

Whisky had got hold of one of my slippers, and was playing with it in my bedroom, and Sprig, rushing up the steps, seized her by the "scruff" of her neck, dragged her howling down the steps, and put her, I can use no other words, into the place where she had been the day before.

Various - Dog Stories from the "Spectator": being anecdotes of the intelligence, reasoning power,: affection and sympathy of dogs, selected from the: correspondence columns of "The Spectator"

But up comes that water-dog of a Jack gripping Ben by the scruff of the neck; and when by our united strength we had hauled them both on the pier, little Mistress Hortense was the one to roll Gillam on his stomach and bid us "Quick! Stand him on his head and pour the water out!"

Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut - Heralds of Empire: Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade

"Mac" first rose to fame in the census department by appearing one afternoon at Empire police station dragging a "bush" native by the scruff of the neck with one hand, and carrying in the other the machete with which the bushman had tried to prove he was a Colombian and not subject to questioning by the agents of other powers.

Harry Alverson Franck - Zone Policeman 88; a close range study of the Panama canal and its workers

But at the same time he tried again to quiet the dog. "Bless me, what is your quarrel with Herr Arne? He is the richest man in the country. He is of noble birth, and had he not been a priest there would have been a great lord of him." But this could not avail to bring the dog to silence. Then Torarin lost patience, so that he took Grim by the scruff of the neck and threw him off the sledge.

Selma Lagerlöf - The Treasure

Actin' on these yere errors, Bowlaig's mother the moment she glimpses Dave grabs young Bowlaigs by the scruff of the neck an' goes caperin' off up hill with him.

Alfred Henry Lewis - Wolfville Nights