lowdown
lowdown noun: inside information, the story or truth.
Noun
lowdown (uncountable)
- inside information, the story or truth.
- All the reporters hoped to be the first to get the lowdown on the celebrity's marriage plans.
- here's the lowdown
- Synonyms:
- scoop, dirt, dope, straight dope, poop
- A lowlife, a despicable person.
Adjective
lowdown (comparative more lowdown, superlative most lowdown)
- Unfair; scoundrelly; shameful.
- lowdown tactics
- seedy, sketchy, disreputable
- So there I was, in the front row of course (it was my reportorial duty), with a bunch of gay men and straight women. And we're all involved in a lowdown — but eminently "Safe" — celebration of the erotic possibilities of the male body.1988 August 20, Chris Reed, “The English 'Strip-tique'”, in Gay Community News, volume 16, number 6, page 11
- Some kinda way, he talked Aunt Fanny into running off with him that night. When they got as far as Kansas City, he was through with her. They stayed in some lowdown kinda hotel in the colored section there', and after that they were headed God knows where.1994, Ivan Webster, The Cares of the Day, University of Alabama Press, →ISBN, page 28
- down low; purporting to be heterosexual while engaged in sex with men.
Adverb
lowdown (comparative more lowdown, superlative most lowdown)
- Unfairly; dishonourably; in a deceitful or mean manner.
- “I say, that’s playing it a bit low down,” I protested.1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 151
Synonyms of lowdown
Forms of lowdown
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| alternative form | low-down |
| alternative form | low down |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more lowdown |
| superlative | most lowdown |
| Adverb | |
| comparative | more lowdown |
| superlative | most lowdown |
Origin of lowdown
Compound adjective of low + down in the sense of "humble" recorded in the 1540s, in the sense of "vulgar, far down the social scale" in 1888. Recorded as a noun in 1915 in the slang sense of secret or inside information.
Questions about lowdown
- What does lowdown mean?
- Lowdown means inside information, the story or truth.
- What part of speech is lowdown?
- Lowdown can be a noun, an adjective or an adverb.
Words near lowdown in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: lowdown (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:
Cite this entry: “lowdown.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lowdown. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.