DOWDY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Dowdy

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/dˈaʊdi/ Listen

Dowdy

adjective

(compar. dowdier; superl. dowdiest)

Lacking in smartness or taste. "A clean and sunny but completely dowdy room"

Primly out of date. Synonyms: frumpish, frumpy.

noun

(pl. dowdies)

British marshal of the RAF who commanded the British air defense forces that defeated the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain (1882-1970). Synonyms: Baron Hugh Caswall Tremenheere Dowding, Dowding, Hugh Dowding.

Deep-dish apple dessert covered with a rich crust. Synonym: pandowdy.

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"Dowdy" Quotes from Famous Books

... said. "It looks a little dowdy just this minute, because the chairs are at the upholsterers to have the gilt touched up; we are putting up new curtains, of course, and the housekeeper has already begun ...

— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... are wont to see them in when their portraits adorn the picture-galleries. With women it is quite different. Woman is born to beautify the domestic circle, woman is always fascinating whether she be dressed up or domestically dowdy, but man is least of ...

— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... some trimmings she wanted to put on the waist. She thinks she loves lavender, but Joseph's coat would have been a colorless piece of apparel beside her dress if we finally hadn't sat on her and told her certain things couldn't be done. She was crazy to pile on a bunch of ancestral lace, yellow and dowdy; but we told her not much, told her freshness and daintiness suited her style much better, and she wasn't old enough to emphasize ancestral lace, and she blushed and gave in. But nothing would have made her do it if Miss Fannie hadn't thought to throw out the ...

— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... stout and dowdy—"like a cook with pretty hands," as Stendhal said of her—mattered nothing to her admirers, many of whom remembered her in the days of her lovely youth. She was, in their eyes, as much a Queen as if she wore a ...

— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... her remarkable appearance among her relatives after so long a silence than pleased, Elizabeth felt. But after she had satisfied her curiosity she was kind, beginning to talk about Lizzie, and mentally compared this thin, brown girl with rough hair and dowdy clothes to her own stylish daughter. Then Lizzie burst in. They could hear her calling to a young man who had walked home with her, even before ...

— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

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