Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See dinghy.
  • Foul; dirty.
  • Soiled; tarnished; of a dusky color; having a dull-brownish tinge.
  • Synonyms Tarnished, rusty, dull.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Soiled; sullied; of a dark or dusky color; dark brown; dirty.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative form of dinghy.
  • adjective drab; shabby; dirty; squalid

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective thickly covered with ingrained dirt or soot
  • adjective causing dejection
  • adjective (of color) discolored by impurities; not bright and clear

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Unknown, though probably from an I-mutated form of "dung".

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Examples

  • One of my policies is to avoid motels where you need to communicate with the clerk through a slot in dingy bulletproof glass.

    Motel Paradiso 2007

  • One of my policies is to avoid motels where you need to communicate with the clerk through a slot in dingy bulletproof glass.

    Motel Paradiso 2007

  • The poor live in dingy cubes of space stacked on top of each other like ice cube trays, twelve stories high even in the slums.

    365 tomorrows » J. Loseth : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2007

  • The poor live in dingy cubes of space stacked on top of each other like ice cube trays, twelve stories high even in the slums.

    365 tomorrows » 2006 » May : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2006

  • For decades a foreign proletariat toiling in dingy factories from Vladivostok to Karl-Marx-Stadt helped bankroll Pyongyang's transformation into a proud monument to ethnic self-reliance, so that someday a Bruce Cumings could boast that it is anything but the ugly Communist capital one might expect.

    Mother of All Mothers 2004

  • For decades a foreign proletariat toiling in dingy factories from Vladivostok to Karl-Marx-Stadt helped bankroll Pyongyang's transformation into a proud monument to ethnic self-reliance, so that someday a Bruce Cumings could boast that it is anything but the ugly Communist capital one might expect.

    Mother of All Mothers 2004

  • Among them was a man in dingy civilian clothes who was lying with his arm across his face and apparently asleep.

    Revenge is Sour 1945

  • And there was a certain dingy office in a lane-like street that was also a centre in the early eighties.

    Canadian Cities of Romance 1922

  • "Bless you, yes, sir," said that worthy, resplendent in dingy scarlet uniform.

    A Little Bush Maid 1910

  • People whose lives, and those of their parents before them, have been spent in dingy tenements, and whose only garden is a rickety soap-box high up on a fire-escape, share this love, which must have a plant to tend, with those whose gardens cover acres and whose plants have been gathered from all the countries of the world.

    A Woman's Hardy Garden 1903

Comments

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  • Bi-sonic as in dingy blond: dirty v. dingbatty.

    March 20, 2009

  • Really, oro ...

    March 20, 2009

  • I rowed my grimy dinghy across an oily bay

    And spied a dingy shack upon a dismal cay.

    May 13, 2010