dowdy
/ˈdaʊdi/
dowdy adjective: plain and unfashionable in style or dress.
Adjective
dowdy (comparative dowdier, superlative dowdiest)
- Plain and unfashionable in style or dress.
- Lacking stylishness or neatness; shabby.
- [...she was] a perfect saint amongst women, but so dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book.1891, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC
- Miss Marina Thompson, a distant cousin of my husband's. She's rather dowdy, is she not?2020 December 25, Chris Van Dusen, “Diamond of the First Water”, in Bridgerton, season 1, episode 1, spoken by Lady Portia Featherington
Noun
dowdy (plural dowdies)
- A plain or shabby person.
- Besides these, however, and the determined dowdies, women who either do not understand dress, or who will not be troubled with it, there are certainly many who, while always anxious to appear to the best advantage, are not wealthy enough to do so […]1877, Truth, volume 1, page 615
- “I knew there were women-dowdies in Bengal. They come up here sometimes. But I didn't know that there were men-dowds, too.”1889, Rudyard Kipling, “The Education of Otis Yeere”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 29
Verb
dowdy (third-person singular simple present dowdies, present participle dowdying, simple past and past participle dowdied)
- To press the crust into the filling during baking, to allow the juices to caramelize on top.
- Topping the apples with squares of dough allowed steam to escape during baking, preventing the apples from overcooking. Dowdying the crust partway through created the dessert's sweet finish.2021, America's Test Kitchen, The Complete Cook’s Country TV Show Cookbook, page 743
Proper noun capitalized: Dowdy
Dowdy (plural Dowdys)
- A surname from Irish.
dowdy meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
dowdy in Tamil
- அழுக்கான, கந்தலான
dowdy in Urdu
- بدلباس, بدوضع, گندی, پھوہڑ
dowdy in Bengali
- অগোছালো, সেকেলে
dowdy in Malayalam
- old-fashioned, unfashionable, frumpy
- പരിഷ്കാരമില്ലാത്ത, പുതുമോടിയിലുള്ള വസ്ത്രം ധരിക്കാത്ത, മോശമായി വസ്ത്രം ധരിച്ച, പ്രാകൃതമായ, അലക്ഷ്യമായി വസ്ത്രം ധരിച്ചു നടക്കുന്ന, പഴഞ്ചൻമട്ടിലുള്ള വേഷം ധരിച്ച
Examples of dowdy in a sentence
- And that dowdy toque: three old grapes to take the harm out of it.
- Imagine my astonishment when, reaching the bustling street, every Englishwoman I look on is also attired in a dowdy housecoat.
- Maybe the dowdy recreational vehicle can be a vehicle of discovery, a cure for farsickness, a Huck Finn raft of escape for the middle-aged.
Forms of dowdy
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | dowdier |
| superlative | dowdiest |
| alternative form (dated, rare) | daverdy |
| Noun | |
| plural | dowdies |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | dowdies |
| present participle | dowdying |
| past participle | dowdied |
| past | dowdied |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Dowdys |
Origin of dowdy
First appears c. 1581. Origin uncertain, probably literally "little poorly dressed woman," formed from doue, "poorly dressed woman". Possibly also related to the Scots dow, meaning to "fade".
Variant of Dowd.
Words formed from dowdy
Words that rhyme with dowdy
Questions about dowdy
- What does dowdy mean?
- Dowdy means plain and unfashionable in style or dress.
- What is dowdy in Tamil?
- Dowdy in Tamil is அழுக்கான, கந்தலான. See Dowdy meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is dowdy?
- Dowdy can be an adjective, a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce dowdy?
- Dowdy is pronounced /ˈdaʊdi/ (UK).
Words near dowdy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dowdy (page history and authors); Dowdy (page history and authors); dowdy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dowdy (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Dowdy (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dowdy (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dowdy.wav.
Cite this entry: “dowdy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dowdy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.