mangy
Americanadjective
-
mangier,
comparative
-
mangiest
superlative
-
having, caused by, or like the mange.
-
a mangy trick.
-
a mangy little suburb.
adjective
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having or caused by mange
a mangy dog
-
scruffy or shabby
a mangy carpet
-
informal stingy or miserly
a mangy reward
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of mangy
Explanation
Imagine something really disgusting — crusty, dirty, falling apart — you know, like zombie flesh. If it’s shoddy, gross, and really, really cruddy, it can be called mangy. If you want a really insulting adjective, you can’t do better than the word mangy. A mangy dog has a skin disease carried by mites that causes the animal to lose its hair and develop crusty patches on its body. Or, if you own a mangy sweater, it is probably threadbare and stained. As you can imagine, you should probably think twice before calling a person mangy!
Vocabulary lists containing mangy
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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:
Besides, treating topical humor in the same way that a toothless, mangy mutt gums a dumpster bone is not the same as maintaining neutrality.
From Salon ● Jul. 31, 2025
The women wear black slips, combat boots and mangy fur coats; the men, gray suits and conservatively wide ties.
From New York Times ● May 21, 2023
The brick stairs knifed past a garden, where lizards darted among eroded stone sculptures and palm trees wore their dead fronds like mangy beards.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2023
An older couple walking by once commented that it looked mangy.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 10, 2022
“With this brand, you will be of a gang too. The mangy, scraggy, sorry gang of Beast Riders.”
From "Beast Rider" by Tony Johnston & María Elena Fontanot de Rhoads
Instead, it embraced something mangier and more tethered to general youth culture.
From New York Times ● Nov. 3, 2016
And after that to be ready, al mangier ou al revele; i.e., to eat or to revel, according to the ordinance of the master and wardens of the fraternity.
From Old and New London Volume I by Walter Thornbury
Hunters with the highest kill count, the mangiest kill or the largest or smallest take home cash, belt buckles, hunting gear or other prizes.
From US News ● Jan. 22, 2016
Ill-shaven and semicomatose, Belushi plays the mangiest animal of them all.
From Time Magazine Archive
Orange-robed Buddhist monks contemplate under bougainvillaea and tamarind trees, watched by some of the mangiest dogs west of El Paso.
From Time Magazine Archive
The thing that so infuriates us afterwards is that we actually believed in the scoundrel's woebegone pathos, although the mangiest cynicism crops out of every pore of his body.
From The Song of Songs by Hermann Sudermann
“Oh,—a fur coat!” cried Peggy, “why, mine—mine has just the mangiest bit of a fur collar, and I’ve been proud enough of that—wait, just wait till I get a wonderful young caracal!”
From Peggy Parsons at Prep School by Annabel Sharp
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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.
