Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Showing signs of wear and tear; threadbare or worn-out: shabby furniture.
- adj. Dilapidated or deteriorated in condition, especially through neglect; seedy: a shabby little park.
- adj. Wearing threadbare clothing.
- adj. Despicable; mean: a shabby trick.
- adj. Not generous or just; unfair: shabby treatment.
- adj. Of mediocre or substandard quality: a shabby performance.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Scabby; mangy.
- Mean; base; scurvy.
- Of mean appearance; noting clothes and other things which are much worn, or evidence poverty or decay, or persons wearing such clothes; seedy.
Wiktionary
- adj. Torn or worn; poor; mean; ragged.
- adj. Clothed with ragged, much worn, or soiled garments.
- adj. Mean; paltry; despicable.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Torn or worn to rage; poor; mean; ragged.
- adj. Clothed with ragged, much worn, or soiled garments.
- adj. Mean; paltry; despicable.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. showing signs of wear and tear
- adj. mean and unworthy and despicable
Etymologies
- From obsolete shab, scab, from Middle English schab, from Old English sceabb.
Examples
“It is not the shabby coat that will make the gentleman look shabby, no more than the fine coat can ever make _the shabby_ look like the gentleman.”
“I did my best to do a neat job but it was still ... umm ... let's call it shabby chic.”
“They were mostly short, hangdog-cheerful men in shabby suits.”
“I would simply suggest that as a work of art it has been able to do this precisely because it has "style," avoids sentimentality and predictability, and doesn't manipulate "our emotions" in shabby and shallow ways.”
“Something that did not say "I slum around in shabby robes your grandmother might have made from the curtains.”
“Certainly not all of our poor kids, but many, do indeed live in shabby apartments where books are considered unaffordable, but life revolves around an ever-flickering large-screen TV.”
“I've lived in shabby and I have lived in chic and I was equally happy in both.”
“Shed slept in shabby pensions, practicing a frugality that was foreign to her at this stage of her life, buying nothing but variations of the same postcards her father sent now.”
“Then two more old men in shabby suits, a gangsta in a wifebeater shirt swearing in Spanish, an Indian couple with three bawling children, a tall black man in a Sonics T-shirt, then a pretty young woman with a tangle of blond hair,”
“Three hours after setting out, we pulled into Vladimir's suburbs, a wasteland of concrete apartment blocks standing in shabby dominion over ragged fields.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘shabby’.
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Linda(G4)
Accurate, address, afford, alert, analyze, ancestor, annual, apparent, arena, arrest, ascend, assist and 126 more...
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Adjectives with 2 syllables that end in -y
angry, bossy, busy, chilly, cheesy, creepy, dirty, early, funny, hairy, happy, healthy and 126 more...
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The Secret Garden
sickly, fretful, toddle, cross, stammer, manor, slink, grind, disdain, imploringly, wring, wailing and 30 more...
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Words of Wear
Words describing worn out objects
worn, tattered, threads, ratty, dirty, old, smudgy, hand me down, stained, threadbare, decrepit, shoddy and 21 more...
bilby "Webb afforded me amusing incidents during the day; we approached the front of a house in the Via de Mercurio, another shabby unshaven attendant was standing outside. He looked like a bag of laundry with a head on. He indicated a boxed partition on the wall. 'Vediamo questo?' he said, and the innuendo was that of something 'naughty'.
'Si,' I said fluently.
- Spike Milligan, 'Mussolini: My Part In His Downfall.' Apr 18, 2009
yarb Citation on woozy. Oct 27, 2008
kewpid “It's not to shabby is it?�? Said Jonny Ive. Feb 19, 2008