dingy
Americanadjective
-
dingier,
comparative
-
dingiest
superlative
-
of a dark, dull, or dirty color or aspect; lacking brightness or freshness.
-
shabby; dismal.
adjective
-
lacking light or brightness; drab
-
dirty; discoloured
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of dingy
First recorded in 1730–40; origin uncertain
Explanation
If something is dingy, it's dirty. If you spend your days as a chimney sweeper, you probably look pretty dingy. The adjective dingy is often, but not always, used to describe one's clothing or living space. The adjective dingy comes from uncertain origins, but experts suspect it may be a backformation from the word dung, which is animal excrement. So you can imagine how dirty, dismal, grungy, and grimy something described as dingy is.
Vocabulary lists containing dingy
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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.
See Examples For:
This was a meeting on neutral territory, a windowless, non descript meeting room down a dingy corridor in the basement of the United Nations.
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
Operators are upgrading vehicles to move beyond perceptions of aging fleets and dingy stations.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026
The veil between this world and the next is so thin that Clark can literally walk right through it, from his dingy store into the familiar yellow dimension of the film’s opening sequence.
From Salon ● May 30, 2026
When one, an unsettling nine-minute experiment about a warren of dingy carpets, taffy-yellow walls and gridded drop ceilings clicked with 78 million viewers, he made sequels.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 28, 2026
Nyame’s empty Story Box rested next to them, as dull and dingy as ever.
From "Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky" by Kwame Mbalia
A delay in getting new rail cars could push back Metro’s expansion and leave passengers stuck with the dingier older cars as hundreds of thousands of people descend on the region for the Games.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2024
Knowles pointed out other upgrades: He airbrushed the paint job on the siding to make it look dingier.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 14, 2021
Your clothes “are dingier from when you started washing them until now. It’s happening a little bit at a time. Because you didn’t sort at all, everything becomes abraded.”
From Washington Post ● Aug. 16, 2021
If they're lucky, they make it out alive, just a bit twisted and misshapen, and a few shades dingier.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 1, 2013
I go down a hall beside the studio audience steps, this hallway dingier than the one we entered the studio through, and open the first door I see.
From "Saints and Misfits" by S.K. Ali
Even when the setting is at its dingiest, its directors Thor Freudenthal and Jon Amiel draw the eye to the beauty in the muck, making the loveliest scenes glow all the richer.
From Salon ● Aug. 29, 2019
That’s just over $10 a day for everything — in one of the world’s most expensive cities, where the tiniest and dingiest rooms start renting $400 a month.
From Time ● Jun. 21, 2016
The BBC visited the workshop of Graham Cox to see how he brings colour and light to the dingiest of corners.
From BBC ● Mar. 23, 2016
It's by far the smallest and dingiest outlet in the chain: The carpet is beige and worn, the ceilings are low, the lights fluorescent.
From BusinessWeek ● Jan. 20, 2011
In going over these dusty books and pamphlets, Doctor Morton laid the dingiest and shabbiest in a little pile.
From The Unpublishable Memoirs by A. S. W. Rosenbach
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
