seedy
/ˈsiːdi/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.83 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
adj
adj
adj
Example Sentences
- "Pomegranates are as seedy as any fruit you are likely to see."
- "Sleazy city / Seedy films / Breathing so heavy / Next to my neighbour / Let’s get acquainted"
- "The healing power of alcohol / Only works on scrapes and nicks / And not on girls in seedy bars / Who drown themselves in it"
- "His seedy, dirt-smudged visage caused her to look at him askance."
- "Besides the broad-brimmed hat, he was distinguished by a spotted tie, a pair of seedy check trousers rather baggy in the seat, and a cut-away coat, much too tight for him."
- "With her aching back and pronounced limp, she was feeling particularly seedy today."
Etymology
From Middle English sedy, equivalent to seed + -y. The senses with negative connotation, first attested by 1725 in slang, originally especially “poor, out of money”, probably arose from the metaphor of a flower that has gone to seed, and is no longer considered beautiful. From there the word came to be used to describe unwell or past-their-prime people, and parallelly run-down places and by extension low-income or crime-affected urban areas. Compare the figurative expressions go to seed (by 1817), etc., originally in reference to plants, “cease flowering as seeds develop”.