lousy
Americanadjective
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infested with lice.
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Informal.
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mean or contemptible.
That was a lousy thing to do.
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wretchedly bad; miserable.
a lousy job; I feel lousy.
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idioms
adjective
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slang very mean or unpleasant
a lousy thing to do
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slang inferior or bad
this is a lousy film
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infested with lice
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slang (foll by with)
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provided with an excessive amount (of)
he's lousy with money
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full of or teeming with
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Other Word Forms
- lousily adverb
- lousiness noun
Etymology
Origin of lousy
First recorded in 1350–1400, lousy is from the Middle English word lousi. See louse, -y 1
Explanation
Lousy things are terrible. The lousy things in life are the ones you complain about: your lousy job, the lousy weather, and the lousy pizza you had for lunch. The slang word lousy is the perfect way to describe something particularly awful or rotten. When you're sick, you feel lousy, and when someone is mean or rude, they treat you in a lousy way. The original, literal meaning of lousy is "infested with lice," those creepy crawly parasites that hang out on people's scalps. It was once common to say a place was "lousy with" something (like tourists or poodles) to mean "swarming with" them.
Vocabulary lists containing lousy
Oh, No! Synonyms for "Bad"
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So Bad: Synonyms for "Awful"
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Unfavorable
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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.
Their passionate fans, who have loyally kept showing up for the last five years to watch the lousy basketball those decisions have wrought, will be wanting.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 15, 2026
It was one of those lousy late-fall New York evenings, cold and dark and sort of half raining and half sleeting.
From Slate • Mar. 29, 2026
Those issues make the sector a pretty lousy place to look for relatively safe income.
From Barron's • Mar. 26, 2026
It's not impossible that Spurs scramble a win here because Arne Slot's side were lousy in Turkey on Tuesday.
From BBC • Mar. 12, 2026
Dorus himself would have admitted to a different fault: he was a lousy speaker.
From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman
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.
