Word.ws English Dictionary

dowdying up

dowdying up is the present participle and gerund of dowdy up.

Meaning of dowdy up

Verb

dowdy up (third-person singular simple present dowdies up, present participle dowdying up, simple past and past participle dowdied up)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To make something appear plain and unattractive.
    • I don't want one ounce of sex appeal emanating from me. I find flip-flops that are too big, and roll up the hem. Hell, I'm even going to dowdy up my hair.2016, Violet Vaughn, Rush for Love

Questions about dowdying up

What is dowdying up the present participle and gerund of?
Dowdying up is the present participle and gerund of dowdy up.

Words near dowdying up in the dictionary

  1. Dowdles
  2. dowds
  3. dowdy
  4. dowdy up
  5. dowdying
  6. dowdying up
  7. dowdyish
  8. dowdyism
  9. Dowdys
  10. Dowe
  11. dowed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dowdying up (page history and authors); dowdy up (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.

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Cite this entry: “dowdying up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dowdying_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.