sloven
Americannoun
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a person who is habitually negligent of neatness or cleanliness in dress, appearance, etc.
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a person who works, acts, speaks, etc., in a negligent, slipshod manner.
noun
Etymology
Origin of sloven
1400–50; late Middle English sloveyn, perhaps < Middle Dutch slof careless ( Dutch slof careless, sloven to toil) + -inne feminine noun suffix
Explanation
A sloven is a disgusting, sloppy person. If you call your messy roommate a sloven, expect him to be offended. You can use the noun sloven when you need a good word for a terrible slob. It's not a very common word, but it replaces pig very nicely when you're talking about a truly sloppy, unpleasant person. Sloven was first used in the fifteenth century to mean "person with horrible manners." Its origins are uncertain, but it probably stems from either the Flemish sloef, "dirty," or slof, which is Dutch for "careless or negligent."
Vocabulary lists containing sloven
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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The Shining
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Jazz
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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.
The agency’s report on her said she “had a very poor personal appearance, her clothes were sloven and dirty, and her hair was uncombed and matty, and she had a very offensive body odor.”
From Washington Times ● Nov. 25, 2018
Wouk described his hero as a cigar-smoking Kentucky coal trucker, huge, thick-featured and rustic, "a hulking sloven of twenty-six who had written an ugly bellowing dinosaur of a novel."
From Time Magazine Archive
Leaving traces of her sloven unhousebroken self all over the county.
From "Jazz" by Toni Morrison
I could see then how pretty she had been in a large-eyed, short-lipped way, and how charming in her youth had been the inconsequence which as the mistress of a family made her a sloven.
From A Woman of Genius by Mary Hunter Austin
How this lack of symmetry should be explained, whether due to sloven work or the result of the effort to adapt the church to the lines of the earlier church of SS.
From Byzantine Churches in Constantinople Their History and Architecture by Alexander Van Millingen
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.
