down-at-the-heel

Also found in: Idioms.

down-at-heel

(doun′ət-hēl′) or down-at-the-heel (-ət-thə-)
adj.
1. Worn out from long use or neglect; dilapidated.
2. Shabbily dressed because of poverty; seedy.
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.
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down-at-heel

or down-at-the-heel
adjective
Showing signs of wear and tear or neglect:
Informal: tacky.
Slang: ratty.
Idioms: all the worse for wear, gone to pot, past cure.
The American Heritage® Roget's Thesaurus. Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Mentioned in
References in classic literature
Zeena came into the room with her dragging down-at-the-heel step, and quietly took her accustomed seat between them.
The new look is targeted at moneyed urbanites, with a ramshackle art gallery and the down-at-the-heel "Miami" nightclub now gradually giving way to a hipster burger joint and a bakery serving latte macchiato.
When Nike plunked down $305 million for a slightly down-at-the-heel Converse in 2003, it tasked David Maddocks with getting the brand back in the running.
This is Blue Book #2, one of thirty-six untitled images in "Blue Book," 2009, Dayanita Singh's series of photographs of industrial sites and deserted, down-at-the-heel interiors swaddled in shades of ...
The once down-at-the-heel range has been given a new lease of life - not least with the arrival of the Colt supermini.
But yes, there is an argument for Bradley, and here it is: While Bradley claims to represent a "new politics," the truth is, he sounds more like an old-fashioned Democrat, concerned about those down-at-the-heel constituencies the New Dems abandoned years ago.
At least two pairs of well-fitting, low-heeled work shoes; not worn, misshapen, down-at-the-heel old street or dress footwear.
"In a sense we got the Q-1 by throwing parts away," says Fremont president Paul Rothschild, who with associate Donald Smith and Rona Rothschild (married to Paul) bought Fremont four and a half years ago as a profitable but down-at-the-heel maker of toys, and auto and drainage parts.
Downtown was gilded, bustling, and dignified; Westside was down-at-the-heel. Downtown had the tourists, the businessmen, the churchgoers; Westside had the warehouses and the railroads--and, as decades passed, it had fewer and fewer of those.
Italian theater star Giorgio Albertazzi holds center stage in sweating, battered close-ups as a down-at-the-heel Neapolitan attorney who finds new motivation to practice his profession when he takes on a difficult case of social injustice.
into one of those huge, operatic, down-at-the-heels Peruvian
The coming-of-age tale unfolds on the titular street (a cheery borough designed by Robert Pinta) in an appealingly down-at-the-heels New York City neighborhood, home to both humans and puppets whose resemblance to certain Muppet characters is entirely intentional.
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