Synonyms for scarecrow
- beggar
- bum
- gamin
- guttersnipe
- hobo
- loafer
- orphan
- tatterdemalion
- tramp
- urchin
- vagabond
- vagrant
- waif
- wastrel
- street person
Antonyms for scarecrow
EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR SCARECROW
“I would not be seen in the street with that scarecrow,” murmured Giles.
In the strange illumination of the search beams he seemed the wraith of a scarecrow.
He once told my mother that he had more than once changed clothes with a scarecrow.
It was a miserable-looking woman in clothes that might have been stolen from a scarecrow.
Do you happen to know whatever became of the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow?
"That is what we are trying to find out," remarked the Scarecrow.
Something—like a scarecrow, but not a scarecrow—swung from a limb overhanging the drive.
Did he deserve to be set up as this scarecrow in English story?
Then they were clustering about him at Scarecrow Charlie's, asking him his name.
But what had he done that they should be flaunted on a scarecrow?
WORD ORIGIN
1550s, from scare (v.) + crow (n.). Earliest reference is to a person employed to scare birds. Meaning "device of straw and cloth in grotesque resemblance of a man, set up in a grain field or garden to frighten crows," is implied by 1580s; hence "gaunt, ridiculous person" (1590s). The older name for such a thing was shewel. Shoy-hoy apparently is another old word for a straw-stuffed scarecrow (Cobbett began using it as a political insult in 1819 and others picked it up; OED defines it as "one who scares away birds from a sown field," and says it is imitative of their cry).