dow·dy

(dou′dē)

adj. dow·di·er, dow·di·est

1. Lacking stylishness or neatness; shabby: a dowdy gray outfit.

2. Old-fashioned; antiquated.

n. pl. dow·dies

A dowdy person; a frump.

[From Middle English doude, immoral, unattractive, or shabbily dressed woman.]

dow′di·ly adv.

dow′di·ness n.

dow′dy·ish adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Adv.

dowdily - in a dowdy unfashionable manner; "she dresses dowdily"

frumpily, frumpishly

Translations

dowdily

[ˈdaʊdɪlɪ] adv (dressed) → in modo scialbo

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

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References in periodicals archive

Those dowdily dressed Dubliners stepping across Grafton or Westmoreland Streets in their full dresses or bowler hats, were they to be granted a quick trip forward in time, would be terrified by the series of political earthquakes lying in wait to unbalance their complacency: the 1913 workers' strike which would paralyze the city, the Great War in which tens of thousands of Irishmen would die, the Easter Rising that would rubbish the city center, the influenza epidemic of 1919 that would remove thousands of them from the ranks of the quick, the high hopes and grim struggle of the War of Independence, the bitterness and disappointment that would follow.

Edwardian Ireland, another country

Yet Wilson is also dowdily old-fashioned, by dint of her subject matter.

Letha Wilson: higher pictures

NO wonder Rachel Riley on Countdown's been told to dress more dowdily. Some of her outfits were so saucy, they could have caused a chunk of her audience - male OAPs - heart attacks.

Your texts

Outside a music-hall she looked like a petite-bourgeoise dressed for church, with a taste for spectacular hats yet otherwise dowdily respectable: decent working-class, with some plebeian dignity.

Toulouse-Lautrec's troupers perform at the Courtauld Gallery

The stunning brunette is revelling in the attention after years of dressing dowdily so she didn'turn heads.

'I dropped five dress sizes and turned into a beauty queen'

The Filipinas are a lively community of women, mostly middle aged and neatly, sometimes even dowdily dressed.

Filipina migrant workers in Bath, England

Ditto to the dowdily galumphing dromedary with its root in dromad, Greek for swift.

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