English

Alternative forms

• blowzy

Adjective

blowsy ‎(comparative blowsier, superlative blowsiest)

1. Having a reddish, coarse complexion, especially with a pudgy face.
   • 1861, George Eliot, “Chapter 11”, in Silas Marner:

     . . . with a face made blowsy by the cold and damp.

   • 1913, Louis Joseph Vance, The Day of Days, ch. 13,

     . . . a man of, say, well-preserved sixty, with a blowsy plump face and fat white side-whiskers.

2. (chiefly of a woman) Slovenly or unkempt, in the manner of a beggar or slattern.
   • 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, ch. 8,

     Her hair so untidy, so blowsy!

3. Unrefined, countrified.
   • 1921, John Buchan, The Path of the King, ch. 11,

     He longed for the warmth and the smells of his favourite haunts—Gilpin's with oysters frizzling in a dozen pans, and noble odours stealing from the tap-room, the Green Man with its tripe-suppers, Wanless's Coffee House, noted for its cuts of beef and its white puddings. He would give much to be in a chair by one of those hearths and in the thick of that blowsy fragrance.

Translations

References

• "blowsy" at OneLook® Dictionary Search.
• Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.