- shabby
- shabby 1 Shabby, dilapidated, dingy, faded, seedy, threadbare refer to the appearance of persons and of things and mean showing signs of wear and tear.Shabby applies to persons and places and suggests a lack of freshness or newness in those items that contribute to appearance; sometimes the term applies directly to the things, especially clothes, which so contribute. Poverty is often suggested as the cause of this run-down condition but various other causes (as neglect or indifference) may also be suggested{
old Bart, shabby and inconspicuous, dunking pound cake with his dirty fingers—W. S. Burroughs
}{villages . . . with their shabby, unpainted shacks, dropping with decay— Brooks
}{everything had been done to make the accused look as shabby as possible. They were outfitted in nondescript clothes— Shirer
}{the old house ... is too elegant for poor people, and too large; too shabby, in too shabby a neighborhood, for the rich— Tate
}Dilapidated (compare dilapidate under RUIN) implies a worse appearance than shabby, usually suggesting a broken-down or tumbledown condition resulting from neglectful lack of repairs or from careless abuse{a dilapidated fence with its gate hanging from one hinge
}{sat down in a dilapidated easy chair minus a cushion— Purdy
}{an old toy is so much better .... The very fact that it was worn and dilapidated caused it to create a feeling of warmth— Henry Miller
}Dingy applies to what is no longer fresh or new in appearance and shows the effects of gradual soiling that dulls the colors or dims the brightness{out of his dingy retreat, dirty and uncomfortable, he would appear resplendent— Osbert Sitwell
}{shabby in attire, dingy of linen— Thackeray
}{counting another man's money ... in a dingy office— Shaw
}{he flashed from dingy obscurity into splendor— H. G. Wells
}Faded also implies lack of freshness but it connotes the loss of vigor or brightness that shows that a person or thing has passed its prime and is revealing signs of drooping and withering{her slightly stale and faded gush about Chopin and her memories of Paris in the spring— Edmund Wilson
}{she lives with her mother, a faded tired woman who played Lady Capulet— Wilde
}{her clothes were always the same and it is hard to remember what she wore. She seemed to sink into the faded anonymity of the old street— Tate
}{so many of the old friends are dead, and those who live are older and changed, and everything seems a bit faded and drab— H. L. Matthews
}Seedy does not go so far as shabby in implying deterioration and lack of freshness but it does suggest some loss of those signs that marked a person or thing as strong or at the peak of value and usefulness{sordid squabbling with his landlady about the rent he owes on a seedy room— McCarten
}{an English setter, a bitch, and rather seedy now and smelly— Henry Miller
}{a table on which was a clutter of seedy Western souvenirs—a rusted, beat-up placer pan . . . and the shellacked tail of a beaver— Stafford
}Seedy is also used in reference to a person who feels himself not really sick but not up to the mark{we were all feeling seedy, and we were getting nervous about it— Jerome
}Threadbare (see also TRITE) in its basic use implies such wear of fabric that all nap is worn away and the threads are visible{the curves of hips and breasts already discernible under the too short and often threadbare clothes— Metalious
}but often this basic notion is lost and the emphasis is on the shabby state typical of or the fact of extreme grinding poverty{the only oppor-tunity ... to find escape from the grim, drab, threadbare unpicturesque poverty of her inharmonious home— Dorothy Canfield
}{England, which has a threadbare Treasury— Sulzberger
}{finally got threadbare enough and hungry enough to overlook my scruples— O'Leary
}Analogous words: worn (see HAGGARD): dowdy, frowzy, *slatternly: shopworn, *trite: decrepit (see WEAK)2 *contemptible, despicable, pitiable, sorry, scurvy, cheap, beggarlyAnalogous words: *mean, sordid, ignoble: *base, low, vile
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
