shabby
Americanadjective
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impaired by wear, use, etc.; worn.
shabby clothes.
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showing conspicuous signs of wear or neglect.
The rooms on the upper floors of the mansion had a rather shabby appearance, as if they had not been much in use of late.
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wearing worn clothes or having a slovenly or unkempt appearance.
a shabby person.
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run-down, seedy, or dilapidated.
a shabby hotel.
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meanly ungenerous or unfair; contemptible, as persons, actions, etc..
shabby behavior.
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inferior; not up to par in quality, performance, etc..
a shabby rendition of the sonata.
adjective
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threadbare or dilapidated in appearance
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wearing worn and dirty clothes; seedy
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mean, despicable, or unworthy
shabby treatment
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dirty or squalid
Other Word Forms
- shabbily adverb
- shabbiness noun
- unshabbily adverb
- unshabby adjective
Etymology
Origin of shabby
1660–70; shab ( Middle English; Old English sceabb scab ) + -y 1; cognate with German schäbig
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Each assignment starts in an old, shabby garage and the mission I watch is delivering water, ammunition and fuel to drone pilots.
From BBC
"To use children as a weapon as the home secretary is doing is a shabby thing," he told the Today programme.
From BBC
How did the shabby offices of the late 1700s, with their dim lights, coal-burning fireplaces and quill pens, evolve into the sleek, high-tech work environments that we know today?
So high, they were exiled to an office in a shabby shack called the Hut, where their debates would not disturb others.
From Los Angeles Times
Wilson Follett, the author of “Modern American Usage,” complained about its “extreme tolerance of crude neologisms and of shabby diction generally.”
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
