DOWDY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Dowdy

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/dˈaʊdi/ Listen

Dowdy

adjective

(compar. dowdier; superl. dowdiest)

Lacking in smartness or taste. "A clean and sunny but completely dowdy room"

Primly out of date. Synonyms: frumpish, frumpy.

noun

(pl. dowdies)

British marshal of the RAF who commanded the British air defense forces that defeated the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain (1882-1970). Synonyms: Baron Hugh Caswall Tremenheere Dowding, Dowding, Hugh Dowding.

Deep-dish apple dessert covered with a rich crust. Synonym: pandowdy.

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"Dowdy" Quotes from Famous Books

... could, too—she no longer doubted her possession of the college girl's one talent that Betty had laughed about. For there was Theresa Reed, her friend down the street. She was homely and awkward, she wore dowdy clothes and wore them badly, she was slow and plodding; but there was one thing that she could do, and the girls admired her for it and had instantly made a place for her. Helen was glad of a second proof ...

— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton

... killing the doctor and you oughtn't to kill me"; and to silence her cries one member of the mob struck her in the mouth with a monkey wrench, knocking her teeth out. On May 24, 1919, at Milan, Telfair County, Georgia, two young white men, Jim Dowdy and Lewis Evans, went drunk late at night to the Negro section of the town and to the home of a widow who had two daughters. They were refused admittance and then fired into the house. The girls, frightened, ran to another home. They were pursued, ...

— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... of the dark suspicious stuffs showed a clear pattern. The faded chairs were hidden by faded antimacassars; the little futile tables concealed their rickets under vague needlework, on which were displayed in straw or tinsel frames pale portraits of dowdy people who had stood like sheep before fifteenth-rate photographers. The mantelpiece and the top of the piano were thickly strewn with fragments of coloured earthenware. At the windows hung heavy dark ...

— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... "Apple Slump" is a pie consisting of apples, molasses, and bread crumbs baked in a tin pan. This is known to New Englanders as "Pan Dowdy." An agreeable bread was at one time made by an ingenious Frenchman which consisted of one third of apples boiled, and ...

— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... waited upon us—a fresh rosy little old woman in a clean dowdy cap and a scanty sprigged gown; a quaint careful person, but accessible to the tribute of our pleasure, to say nothing of any other. She had the accent of the country, but the manners of the house. Under her guidance we passed through a dozen apartments, duly ...

— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James

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