What's the difference between dowdy and tacky?

Dowdy


Definition:

  • (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.

Tacky


Definition:

  • (a.) Sticky; adhesive; raw; -- said of paint, varnish, etc., when not well dried.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But to be described as "tacky" is another thing entirely.
  • (2) The samples were periodically withdrawn for examination of yellowing and tackiness.
  • (3) He says they talk about "the love, life and losses of [Real Housewives Of Atlanta star] NeNe Leakes," and that they're "designing the merchandise for the next season of [equally tacky reality show] Bad Girls Club: Evian bottles replaced with leopard print covers to conceal the brand on TV.
  • (4) It ultimately led to his re-capture on Friday in a tacky hotel in Los Mochis, a town of tomato growers on the Pacific Coast.
  • (5) The five-year-old isn’t troubled that it might make her look tacky.
  • (6) Practical application is hampered by inherent characteristics of elastomers, i.e., high tackiness and highly hydrophobic surface properties.
  • (7) Most of the outfits he describes as "tacky" and features in his video look to me like those ones praised by fashion magazines.
  • (8) He's right, these aren't just modern irritants, they're downright tacky.
  • (9) 22 min "All this possession and ticky-tacky passing," says Sean Boiling.
  • (10) We might have thought that that was going to be the nadir of this teeth-grindingly tacky week, but then West Australian talk radio host and alleged adult Howard Sattler demonstrated that our concepts of “bottom of the barrel” were wildly optimistic.
  • (11) Abbott, the Liberal leader, said the menu was "tacky and scatological" but confirmed that Brough's candidacy was safe.
  • (12) Cameron Joseph (@cam_joseph) Donald Trump on Iraq's oil reserve: "I say we should take it and pay ourselves back" #CPAC March 15, 2013 12.52pm GMT "That's the problem with the country," Trump says after detailing how the White House wouldn't let him build one of his tacky black-and-gold-paneled ballrooms on their back lawn.
  • (13) Lidl will forever be associated for me with that illicit drink in its tacky rouge bottle.
  • (14) But what I especially enjoy about Weird Al's song is the way he deems tacky certain aspects of modern life that are now so common they can pass almost unseen: people Instagramming every meal (an "unfollow" offence if ever there was one); people who keep old liquor bottles in a pointless attempt to create a kind of speakeasy vibe; live-tweeting private occasions, and so on.
  • (15) They’ve taken something fine and beautiful and replaced it with something tacky and characterless and guess what?
  • (16) A woman who wears Versace fancies herself quite the molto molto sexy mama, with a dash of 80s tackiness thrown in.
  • (17) I had been trapped in the politically correct negative view of the relay, the view that the cult of the torch was an invented tradition foisted on the Olympics by the Nazis in 1936 and that the 2012 relay was a tacky stunt for drumming up phoney enthusiasm for the London Games from an otherwise indifferent public.
  • (18) As Shona says, certain styles and habits are described as "tacky" by Yankovic in this song, and I don't think many will disagree: Ed Hardy shirts, glitter Uggs, pink sequin Crocs.
  • (19) And you will not find Richard Branson pushing a trolley down the aisle for some tacky publicity stunt.
  • (20) Spinability, pourability, adhesiveness and tackiness are starting to be recognised as physical properties of RTS and its is likely that they may be relevant in the pathogenesis of airways obstruction.