frowsy
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Explanation
Someone who's frowsy looks like a slob. If you go to a job interview looking frowsy, you're less likely to get the job than if you comb your hair and wear a tidy suit. If you sleep in your clothes so that you can roll out of bed in the morning and walk right out the door to catch a bus for school, you're in danger of looking frowsy. Frowsy people are untidy and scruffy — sometimes even dirty, with unwashed hair and grubby fingernails. Frowsy and its variation frowzy probably come from the now-obsolete adjective frowsty, "having an unpleasant smell."
Vocabulary lists containing frowsy
Selected Short Stories of H.G. Wells
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The Magician's Nephew
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Stories of Ourselves
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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.
But it’s that second performance, a frowsy FBI agent named Terry Husk, that really stuns you, because it’s Jude Law, going darker than ever.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 6, 2024
She mentions 1989’s Steel Magnolias, in which she played a frowsy southern misfit behind thick, horn-rimmed specs.
From The Guardian • Jun. 21, 2015
The lush mane was ratted and backcombed into a frowsy beehive, the kind in which hoodlums of legend used to conceal their razor blades.
From New York Times • Jul. 27, 2011
Sweet Bird has one terrific part: the frowsy monster of a princess.
From Time Magazine Archive
I push past him into the cramped, frowsy cottage.
From "The Bletchley Riddle" by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
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.
