down at heel
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.84 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
1
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Shabbily dressed, slovenly; impoverished; shabby, dilapidated.
Example Sentences
- "A pair of Oxford-mixture trousers […] fell in a series of not the most graceful folds over a pair of shoes sufficiently down at heel to display a pair of very soiled white stockings."
- "He was a queer shoot, again, in his unkempt longish hair and slovenly clothes, a sort of very vulgar down-at-heel American in appearance."
- "For the likes of her, the down-at-heels support of Hoboken pier was plenty good enough."
- "Last year, he was down at heel, homeless and had an erratic relationship with his family."
- "A down-at-the-heels advertising copywriter when he hit on the idea, he originally meant it as a joke."
- "Researchers analysed 500 interviews with people in right-wing strongholds in France and Germany, places such as Gelsenkirchen-Ost, a down-at-heel suburb north-east of Essen blighted with high levels of unemployment and where anti-immigrant party Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) garnered nearly a third of the vote in the 2017 elections […]"
Inflected Forms
more down at heel (comparative)
most down at heel (superlative)
down at heels (alternative)
down at the heel (alternative)
down at the heels (alternative)
down in the heel (alternative)
down in the heels (alternative)