adj

• (figurative) Disgusting, repellent.
  "The novel was a flagrantly scabrous bodice-ripper, and Rachael was ashamed to read it in public."
• (figurative) Salacious, scandalous; concerning oneself with lurid or lascivious substance.
  "Remember a few years ago there was that scabrous movie Snuff? When it played in New York there were enormous protests, huge publicity — and huge crowds and profits at the theater."
• (figurative) Of music, writing, etc.: lacking refinement; unmelodious, unmusical.
  "[A]s his Verse is ſcabrous, and hobbling, and his Words not every where well choſen, the purity of Latin being more corrupted, than in the time of Juvenal, and conſequently of Horace, who writ when the Language was in the heighth of its perfection; ſo his diction is hard; his Figures are generally too bold and daring; and his Tropes, particularly his Metaphors, inſufferably ſtrain'd."
• (figurative) Difficult, thorny, troublesome, requiring tact.
  "These were things which gave him [Louis XI of France] no concern; and he went on alone, without taking any advice, in the scabrous path of novelty, turning his back on antiquity, and laughing at it. When solemnly remonstrated with by its most venerable representatives, he smiled and shrugged his shoulders."