(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.
Frump
Definition:
(v. t.) To insult; to flout; to mock; to snub.
(n.) A contemptuous speech or piece of conduct; a gibe or flout.
(n.) A cross, old-fashioned person; esp., an old woman; a gossip.
Example Sentences:
(1) If you didn't like the focus on birds and beer, you were easily classed as a frump and a drudge.
(2) Although the "first lady" is not an official position in France, Trierweiler was granted an office and staff at the Elysée palace and has maintained a high media profile, which included an appearance at a White House reception in high-heeled shoes that made the other G8 wives look like flat-footed frumps.
(3) There are other factors, not least that, these days, M&S clothing seems to range from eastern bloc frump, circa 1981, to wacky Middle-earth festival-goer, with not much else in between.
(4) Much has been made of Sturgeon's physical makeover in recent years – "she was a frump!