shabby

[ shab-ee ]

adjective

, shab·bi·er, shab·bi·est.

1. impaired by wear, use, etc.; worn:

   shabby clothes.

2. showing conspicuous signs of wear or neglect:

   The rooms on the upper floors of the mansion had a rather shabby appearance, as if they had not been much in use of late.

3. wearing worn clothes or having a slovenly or unkempt appearance:

   a shabby person.

4. run-down, seedy, or dilapidated:

   a shabby hotel.

5. meanly ungenerous or unfair; contemptible, as persons, actions, etc.:

   shabby behavior.

6. inferior; not up to par in quality, performance, etc.:

   a shabby rendition of the sonata.

shabby

/ ˈʃæbɪ /

adjective

1. threadbare or dilapidated in appearance
2. wearing worn and dirty clothes; seedy
3. mean, despicable, or unworthy

   shabby treatment

4. dirty or squalid

Derived Forms

• ˈshabbiness, noun
• ˈshabbily, adverb

Other Words From

• shabbi·ly adverb
• shabbi·ness noun
• un·shabbi·ly adverb
• un·shabby adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of shabby¹

1660–70; shab ( Middle English; Old English sceabb scab ) + -y ¹; cognate with German schäbig

Word History and Origins

Origin of shabby¹

C17: from Old English sceabb scab + -y ¹

Example Sentences

It was written in 1940 by Woody Guthrie, allegedly in a shabby hotel room just outside of Times Square—not on the 6, but close enough.

From Time

A friend sees Etta in a bookstore, in her shabby daily costume — a “wrinkled old evening gown” and sneakers.

From Washington Post

More and more often, I settle into a shabby, cat-clawed wing chair with the day’s newspapers and periodically snort “Harrumph!”

From Washington Post

Ever since I encountered the stunning Tepotztli tools, I’ve been side-eying my shabby cocktail set, quietly suppressing the urge to throw my old tools in the trash and order my dream set.

From Eater

Neither is too shabby, considering how porous some other, more experienced clubs have been.

From FiveThirtyEight

We met on the third floor of a shabby building in Asadabad in an impossibly spare room that we dragged cushions into.

From The Daily Beast

Graterford is a forbidding, shabby, woebegone facility built in 1929.

From The Daily Beast

It was such a lovely, shabby, many deco building town and completely unexploited.

From The Daily Beast

Are all these setups, coincidences, misunderstandings, a shabby mass tabloid conspiracy, people on the make?

From The Daily Beast

Not too shabby for a creature less than a year old who had never set a tentacle on the pitch.

From The Daily Beast

The English have too much pride to be tricky or shabby, even in the essentially corrupting relation of buyer and seller.

From Project Gutenberg

The farmer stooped down, and raised the shabby bonnet from the face of the woman to examine her more carefully.

From Project Gutenberg

He turned into an alley, down which, nautically speaking, he rolled into a shabby little court.

From Project Gutenberg

She still wore the shabby lace and the artificial bunch of violets on the side of her head.

From Project Gutenberg

I am sure there is nothing lower, or more mean and shabby, than getting places and praise a fellow does not deserve.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• crummy
• decaying
• decrepit
• desolate
• dilapidated
• dingy
• pitiful
• ramshackle
• ratty
• rickety
• run down
• scruffy
• seedy
• shoddy
• squalid
• tacky
• tattered
• threadbare
• worn