Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A usually covered enclosure for pigs.
  • noun Informal A dirty or very untidy place.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A sty or pen for pigs; a pig-pen.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A pigpen.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A shelter where pigs are kept.
  • noun slang A dirty or very untidy place.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a pen for swine

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • I think I see you — for I try to see you in the flesh as I write these sentences — I think I see you leap at the word pigsty, a hyperbolical expression at the best.

    Lay Morals 2005

  • I think I see you -- for I try to see you in the flesh as I write these sentences -- I think I see you leap at the word pigsty, a hyperbolical expression at the best.

    Father Damien, an Open Letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu Robert Louis Stevenson 1872

  • I think I see you -- for I try to see you in the flesh as I write these sentences -- I think I see you leap at the word pigsty, a hyperbolical expression at the best.

    Lay Morals Robert Louis Stevenson 1872

  • Of course, this doesn't mean you should heed their every command, but if they tell you to clean up the "pigsty" - i.e. your room, it wouldn't hurt.

    Cube Rules 2009

  • Yes, happily, the pigsty was at the end of the wood-house, and could be reached under cover.

    The Peterkin Papers Lucretia Peabody 1886

  • The Freaney family lived in a three-bedroom terrace house in Salop Street, Penarth, which Mr Rees described as a "pigsty".

    WalesOnline - Home 2011

  • For the third time within a month, Stalybridge and Hyde MP and Cabinet Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions, James Purnell has been yet again caught abusing the Parliamentary expenses by claiming £10,143 more for his rent on his London home which he left like a "pigsty".

    Purnell Pockets £10k Tom Hagen 2009

  • For the third time within a month, Stalybridge and Hyde MP and Cabinet Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions, James Purnell has been yet again caught abusing the Parliamentary expenses by claiming £10,143 more for his rent on his London home which he left like a "pigsty".

    Archive 2009-05-01 Tom Hagen 2009

  • Personally, and you can call me naively optimistic, but I'm disappointed he made it back into his "pigsty" of a constituency.

    The grannie's on... Jeff 2007

  • These cottages are in themselves as ugly as possible, resembling a large kind of pigsty; but often, by dint of the verdure on their thatch and the shrubbery clustering about them, they look picturesque.

    Passages from the English Notebooks, Complete Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834

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