frowsy

English

Etymology

Unknown, but perhaps related to the dialectal adjective frowsty. Attested since the 1680s.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɹaʊzi/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Adjective

frowsy (comparative frowsier, superlative frowsiest)

1. Having a dingy, neglected, and scruffy appearance.
   • 1731, [Jonathan Swift], “Strephon and Chloe”, in A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed. […], Dublin, London: […] [William Bowyer] for J. Roberts […], published 1734, →OCLC, page 8:

     And then, ſo nice, and ſo genteel; / Such Cleanlineſs from Head to Heel: / No Humours groſs, or frowzy Steams, / No noiſom Whiffs, or ſweaty Streams, / Before, behind, above, below, / Could from her taintleſs Body flow.

   • 1859 November 26 – 1860 August 25, [William] Wilkie Collins, “The Narrative of Marian Halcombe, Taken from Her Diary”, in The Woman in White. […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, […], published 1860, →OCLC, part I, page 84, column 2:

     I was terribly afraid, from what I had heard of Blackwater Park, of fatiguing antique chairs, and dismal stained glass, and musty, frowzy hangings, and all the barbarous lumber which people born without a sense of comfort accumulate about them, in defiance of all consideration due to the convenience of their friends.

   • 1894 December – 1895 November, Thomas Hardy, chapter IX, in Jude the Obscure, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], published 1896, →OCLC:

     Having, like Jude, made rather a hasty toilet to catch the train, Arabella looked a little frowsy, and her face was very far from possessing the animation which had characterized it at the bar the night before.

   • 1916 December 29, James Joyce, chapter III, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC:

     Frowsy girls sat along the curbstones before their baskets.

   • 1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter I, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001:

     He had seen it lying in the window of a frowsy little junk-shop in a slummy quarter of the town (just what quarter he did not now remember) and had been stricken immediately by an overwhelming desire to possess it.

Alternative forms

• frowzy

Translations

having a dingy, neglected, and scruffy appearance

• Bulgarian: запуснат (bg) (zapusnat)
• Catalan: desendreçat
• Czech: zanedbaný (cs)
• Finnish: resuinen