What is "scruffs"

Usage examples of "scruffs".

This was a calamity he had not foreseen, and he wanted to bust his roommates' heads open with his fists or pick them up, each in turn, by the seats of their pants and the scruffs of their necks and pitch them out once and for all into the dank, rubbery perennial weeds growing between his rusty soupcan urinal with nail holes in the bottom and the knotty-pine squadron latrine that stood like a beach locker not far away.

We walk past shacks with men holding roosters up by the scruffs of their necks, trying to strengthen their limbs for the rooster fights.

We fished Bart’s disciples out of the waves by the scruffs of their necks and set sail just as the rocks began to rain down on us.