Dickensian
Britishadjective
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of Charles Dickens or his works
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squalid and poverty-stricken
working conditions were truly Dickensian
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characterized by jollity and conviviality
a Dickensian scene round the Christmas tree
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grotesquely comic, as some of the characters of Dickens
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
There is still plenty of Dickensian melodrama, especially when Livia relates the sequence of catastrophes that account for her transformation from a virtuoso with dreams of stardom to a small-town piano teacher and farmer’s wife.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026
“London Falling” has a Dickensian texture, but nothing is fictional.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026
Not even Dickensian “A Christmas Carol” visitations by the specters of his father and an Indonesian business partner negotiating a project involving a sandstone reservoir with “significant extraction costs” diminish his concomitant guilt and chagrin.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 26, 2026
But a society’s values are, in large part, reflected by how it treats its most vulnerable members — and America in the 21st century is growing increasingly Dickensian.
From Salon ● Sep. 16, 2025
And if I lived in Dickensian England, I would have been thrown into Bedlam, which is more than just a description of madness.
From "Challenger Deep" by Neal Shusterman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
