Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Like a dowdy; somewhat dowdy.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Like a dowdy.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Like a
dowdy ;frumpy .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Who was to distinguish her, Mrs. Juliet St. Leger Temple, from the fat, dowdyish, over-dressed, gaudy Mrs. Temple, who wore a wig, and whose eyes squinted?
Hubert's Wife A Story for You Minnie Mary Lee
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But it was not an easy thing to face a whole schoolroom full of girls and boys -- and most of them strangers to her -- looking so "dowdyish."
Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill Or, Jasper Parloe's Secret Alice B. Emerson
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They did not dress well: one looked rustic; another was dowdyish; a third was over-fine; a fourth was insignificant.
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"Who is that person coming up the lane?" asked Loveday, her attention suddenly attracted by a tall, thin figure, dressed in shabby black, with a large, dowdyish bonnet, and carrying a basket in her hand as if she were returning from some errand.
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They did not dress well: one looked rustic; another was dowdyish; a third was over-fine; a fourth was insignificant.
Gala-days Gail Hamilton 1864
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Ralph, though wise beyond his years, and one who, in a thought borrowed in part from Ovid, we may say, could rather compute them by events than ordinary time, wanted yet considerably in that wholesome, though rather dowdyish virtue, which men call prudence.
Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia William Gilmore Simms 1838
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These girls were all dressed in black gowns, with white aprons and neckerchiefs, and white linen caps on their heads, -- a very dowdyish attire, and well suited to their figures.
Passages from the English Notebooks, Volume 1. Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834
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These girls were all dressed in black gowns, with white aprons and neckerchiefs, and white linen caps on their heads, -- a very dowdyish attire, and well suited to their figures.
Passages from the English Notebooks, Complete Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834
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They search for meaning, order, fame, and transcendence in dowdyish party scenes of empty fabulousness and joyless desperation.
Bookslut 2009
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Reuter appear dowdyish and commonplace compared with the splendid charms of some of her pupils?”
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