down at heel

Adjective

down at heel (comparative more down at heel, superlative most down at heel)

1. (literally) In poor condition, especially due to having worn heels; worn-out, shabby.
   • A pair of Oxford-mixture trousers […] fell in a series of not the most graceful folds over a pair of shoes sufficiently down at heel to display a pair of very soiled white stockings.1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 41, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC
2. (broadly, idiomatic) Shabbily dressed, slovenly; impoverished; shabby, dilapidated.
   • He was a queer shoot, again, in his unkempt longish hair and slovenly clothes, a sort of very vulgar down-at-heel American in appearance.1916, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “John”, in Twilight in Italy, London: Duckworth and Co. […], →OCLC, pages 211–212
   • For the likes of her, the down-at-heels support of Hoboken pier was plenty good enough.1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 1

   Antonyms:

   well-heeled