dingy
/ˈdɪn.d͡ʒi/
dingy adjective: dark, dull. Also the alternative form of dinghy.
Adjective (1)
dingy (comparative dingier, superlative dingiest)
- Dark, dull.
- The station has been refurbished both at ground level and below ground, where the wide, fluorescently lit platforms are an almost unrecognisable metamorphosis of the dingy, reeking Low Level of old.1960 December, “The Glasgow Suburban Electrification is opened”, in Trains Illustrated, page 713
- Shabby, squalid, uncared-for.
- He led her through dingy wareroom after wareroom, counting-house after counting-house, where the clerks all were silent and subdued. He led her at last into a dingy sanctum, dimly lighted by one shaded lamp. In this safe there were piles of dingy papers and more dingy ledgers; […]1853 Christmas, [George Augustus Sala], “Over the Way’s Story”, in Charles Dickens, editor, Another Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire. Being the Extra Christmas Number of Household Words. […]...
- At last the first glimpse from a bridge of an open-top red bus, and a noticeable darkening of the atmosphere from the smoke of London: then the increasingly dingy stations with double-barrel names, set amid what has always been to me the outstanding feature of the "Premier Line" approach to...1951 October, R. S. McNaught, “Lines of Approach”, in Railway Magazine, page 704
- Antonyms:
- pristine
Adjective (2)
dingy (comparative dingier, superlative dingiest)
- Resembling or characteristic of a ding (the sound).
- I love it when they hit. You know the sound when they hit? That dingy sound, it’s like faster, and contained somehow? That’s a great sound. Happens like a fraction of a second before you know what you’ve hit, before you figure it out.1997, Frederick Barthelme, chapter 6, in Bob the Gambler, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, page 63
- I remember we had a small electronic toy that had hot lines and made dingy sounds where you tried to eat all the pellets before the boxes with yellow inside them got you. Father said this was one of the first toys ever to be made and we were awe-struck by it.[2008?], Colin Jacks, chapter IX, in The Manikin Textbook, Jamaica Plain, Mass.: Mister Records, →OCLC, 2nd book, page 214
Also used as
dingy is also the alternative form of dinghy.
Examples of dingy in a sentence
- As an angst-ridden teenager, I was a haunter of smoke-filled coffee shops and dingy second-hand bookstores.
- The walls were never painted during my tenantry, becoming dingier and dingier as the years went by.
- The inner city was ringed with dingy industrial areas.
Synonyms of dingy
Antonyms
Forms of dingy
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | dingier |
| superlative | dingiest |
| Noun | |
| plural | dingies |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | dingies |
| present participle | dingying |
| past participle | dingied |
| past | dingied |
Origin of dingy
From English dialectal (Kentish) dingy (“dirty”), of unknown origin, though probably from Middle English *dingy, dungy, from Old English *dyncgiġ (“covered with dung, dirty”), an umlaut form of duncge, dung (“dung”), equivalent to dung + -y, hence a doublet of dungy.
From ding + -y.
Words formed from dingy
Phrases with dingy
Words that rhyme with dingy
Questions about dingy
- What does dingy mean?
- Dingy means dark, dull.
- What part of speech is dingy?
- Dingy is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce dingy?
- Dingy is pronounced /ˈdɪn.d͡ʒi/.
Words near dingy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dingy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dingy.wav.
Cite this entry: “dingy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dingy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.