Rough stray caught scratching around (4)
I believe the answer is:
thug
'rough' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'stray caught scratching around' is the wordplay.
'stray' becomes 'tug' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'caught' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'scratching' becomes 'itching' ('itch' can be a synonym of 'scratch').
'around' indicates the central letters.
The centre of 'itching' is 'h'.
'tug' placed around 'h' is 'THUG'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for thug that I've seen before include "Hood" , "Hooligan" , "violent man" , "brute" , "Bully" .)