(superl.) Showing a vulgar taste in dress; awkward and slovenly in dress; vulgar-looking.
(n.) An awkward, vulgarly dressed, inelegant woman.
Example Sentences:
(1) This mixture (also called Innovar) is rapid in action and results in complete suppression of vestibular activity of both normal subjects and those with Ménière's disease as described by Dowdy, et al., in a preliminary report.
(2) Its flagship store on Regent Street had the air of a venerable institution - dowdy, British, heedless of what was going on outside its own doors.
(3) Now, a two-year refurbishment has transformed a dowdy labyrinth with state-of-the-art lighting, subtle wall colouring and a clever choice of paintings.
(4) When I was a boy London was a dowdy place of tea-houses and stale rock cakes where everybody spoke English.
(5) New branches of the Women’s Institute , hitherto firmly associated in the national imagination with the dowdy, jam-making elders of rural communities, began to be founded by thirtysomethings in fashionable urban neighbourhoods.
(6) But it’s not easy to juggle style and substance in politics, as Martinez discovered when he looked to Capitol Hill for wardrobe inspiration and came up short, discovering that a deliberate dowdiness pervades real-life DC wardrobes .
(7) Though the elderly Victoria came to symbolise a dowdy puritanism, the early years of her reign were marked by scandal and assassination attempts.
(8) It’s a once-glorious, now-dowdy thoroughfare with a few refulgent granite buildings surrounded by an excess of eyesores.
(9) She's said in the past that she did it to avoid being typecast after a succession of dowdy roles, which makes some kind of sense.
(10) I hated it,” wrote Katharine Graham , whose family owned the paper for 80 years , deriding it as “plain, dowdy and full of compromises”.
(11) The two-year refurbishment has transformed a dowdy labyrinth with state-of-the-art lighting and a clever choice of paintings.
(12) Martinez admitted it was a challenge: “The clothes were semi-fitted, not supposed to be sexy, just tailored – but Julia is naturally sexy, so it sometimes came off that way.” Essentially, Hollywood’s version of "dowdy" isn’t dowdy at all, but we applaud Martinez’s efforts.
(13) In a newly released Old Spice commercial , a collection of pathetic, dowdy, genderless "momcreatures" stalk their sons on dates and other encounters with young women.
(14) Google of course has considerably more resources than dowdy data protection offices and, as the court recognised, a significant influence on the lives of many individuals.
(15) But theimage of electric vehicles as dowdy "Noddy" cars has begun to change, due to luxury electric sports cars such as California's Tesla Roadster and the British-designed Lightning GT.
(16) When the Beveridge Report, which laid the foundations for the welfare state, was published in 1942, it sold a third of a million copies, dowdy official report though it might have been.
Dowry
Definition:
(n.) A gift; endowment.
(n.) The money, goods, or estate, which a woman brings to her husband in marriage; a bride's portion on her marriage. See Note under Dower.
(n.) A gift or presents for the bride, on espousal. See Dower.
Example Sentences:
(1) Opcapita was also handed a £50m dowry to take over the business.
(2) However, the most spectacular fundraiser was not the auction room but a wedding, when the ninth duke married the American railroad heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt, securing a gigantic dowry, a fortune in shares and an annual allowance.
(3) The concessions he agreed, and the £9.25m "dowry" paid to the Lebedevs to buy it in the form of guaranteed investment for the next 10 months, are testament to O'Reilly's eagerness to sell.
(4) When the men have paid the dowry and fulfilled the marriage customs they are entitled to have sexual intercourse with their wives.
(5) I wanted to provoke, to make them realise that demanding dowry is no way to respect women.
(6) The £40m dowry will be used to refurbish stores as Aeon outlets with the cash helping to preserve employment of Tesco's nearly 1,000 workforce.
(7) Alan Clarke, UK economist at BNP Paribas The odd couple: After an intense five-day engagement, the shotgun wedding between the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats was finally confirmed late last night – albeit with a massive dowry paid up front.
(8) The local branch of humanitarian agency Intersos and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, raised the money to pay back the balance of the dowry – 250,000 ouguiyas (£535) – and applied to a judge for a restraining order against Nafissa’s husband, which was granted.
(9) Though prohibited by law since 1961, dowry is ingrained in Indian culture, she said.
(10) Many poor families in Yemen marry off young daughters to save on the costs of bringing up a child and earn extra money from the dowry given to the girl.
(11) It was owned by Sweden's wealthy Kamprad family, whose patriarch Ingvar founded Ikea , for nearly 20 years, but even their expertise could not revive its fortunes and they paid restructuring firm Hilco a multimillion-pound dowry to take the loss-making business off their hands in December 2009.
(12) However, Koushik Chatterjee, the group executive director of Tata Steel, said the Indian company did not provide a dowry as part of the deal to sell its Scunthorpe steelworks to Greybull , and is selling the rest of the business because it cannot afford the running costs.
(13) The government’s efforts to persuade Indians not to give or accept a dowry – consisting mainly of stodgy sermons – have proved ineffectual.
(14) Recurrent epidemics accounted for 38 per cent of the total mortality experienced by girls enrolled in the Dowry Fund.
(15) If a woman manages to obtain a divorce without her husband's consent, she will lose the sum of money (or dowry) that was agreed to at the time of marriage.
(16) Contrary to the general belief that girls are unwelcome due to the dowry system, in rural areas additional children were desired by a larger proportion of women with 2 sons than of those with 1 son and 1 daughter.
(17) The retailer has been hard hit by the collapse in consumer spending caused by the financial crisis, and French company Kesa paid OpCapita a £50m dowry to take the loss-making chain off its hands just nine months ago.
(18) It is one of two public information videos that take aim at the dowry system.
(19) Epidemics and mortality in 15th and 16th century Florence, Italy, were investigated by use of records of the government-sponsored Dowry Fund.
(20) Based on the real-life story of billionaire Hong Kong shipping tycoon Cecil Chao, who offered a $65m (£40m) dowry to any man who would marry his lesbian daughter, the film is not expected to hit cinemas for several years.