English

Alternative forms

• frowzy

Adjective

frowsy ‎(comparative frowsier, superlative frowsiest)

1. Having a dingy, neglected, and scruffy appearance.
   • 1895, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, Chapter 9,

     Having, like Jude, made rather a hasty toilet to catch the train, Arabella looked a little frowsy, and her face was very far from possessing the animation which had characterized it at the bar the night before.

   • 1916, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Chapter 3,

     Frowsy girls sat along the curbstones before their baskets.

   • 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part One, Chapter 1,

     He had seen it lying in the window of a frowsy little junk-shop in a slummy quarter of the town (just what quarter he did not now remember) and had been stricken immediately by an overwhelming desire to possess it.

   • See also citations under frowzy.

Translations

References

1. ↑ “frowsy” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary (2001).