frumpy
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of frumpy
Explanation
To be frumpy is to be out of date style-wise. If you want to get on your mom's bad side, tell her she looks frumpy. Have you ever seen one of those old one-piece bathing suits that cover almost the entire body? A woman wearing one of those today would be considered frumpy. This word has to do with how people — especially women — dress. A fashion model is not likely to be frumpy. When you look frumpy, your clothes are out of date and also modest, boring, or drab. Frumpy is the opposite of stylish.
Vocabulary lists containing frumpy
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
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Summer of the Mariposas
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Little Fires Everywhere
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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:
After Fawlty Towers, Scales continued to work in television, including a stint as the frumpy Elizabeth Mapp in ITV's Mapp and Lucia.
From BBC ● Oct. 28, 2025
What’s left is a narrowed, frumpy prestige app that feels like HBO Now and HBO Go, complemented only by a limited window of BritBox previews.
From Slate ● Aug. 7, 2025
However you look, you will feel frumpy compared to everyone else.
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2023
Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, a Chinese-American woman who is at odds with her husband, father, daughter and a frumpy tax auditor named Deirdre Beaubeirdre played by movie veteran Jamie Lee Curtis.
From Reuters ● Mar. 9, 2023
“I don’t want to wear anything real pretty and lacy to the game. I prefer to wear something real ugly and frumpy instead.”
From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy
In baggy pants and a man’s button-down, she looked frumpier than necessary, Hal thought, though maybe she’d always looked like this and Hal hadn’t been paying attention.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 20, 2018
She's frumpier than Mum, any day, and mousier.
From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell
Such distractions aside, “The Dressmaker” looks great, thanks to Donald McAlpine’s superb cinematography and gorgeous costumes that make even Dungatar’s frumpiest denizens look like Richard Avedon models.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 22, 2016
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.
