shabby
/ˈʃæbi/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.28 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of clothing, a place, etc.: unkempt and worn or otherwise in poor condition due to age or neglect; scruffy.
adj
Of a person, their behaviour, etc.: despicable, mean; also, not generous; stingy, tight-fisted.
Example Sentences
- "They lived in a tiny apartment, with some old, shabby furniture."
- "[A]s there was a stream of people pouring into a shabby house not far from the entrance, he waited until they had made their way in, […]"
- "[C]ommonplace books are generally new, or at least in fine bindings. And here was a shabby little old book, such as, if it had been commonplace, would not have been likely to be the companion of a young lady at the bottom of a quarry— […]"
- "[They] lived […] in one of the shabbiest streets in the debatable land between Pimlico and Chelsea—by courtesy, South Belgravia."
- "Miss Phyllis Morgan, as the hapless heroine dressed in the shabbiest of clothes, appears in the midst of a gay and giddy throng; she apostrophises all and sundry there, including the villain, and has a magnificent scene which always brings down the house, and nightly adds to her histrionic laurels."
- "[T]hings got shabbier and got shabbier summer after summer. The mat was fading; the wall-paper was flapping. You couldn't tell any more that those were roses on it. Still, if every door in a house is left perpetually open, and no lockmaker in the whole of Scotland can mend a bolt, things must spoil."
Etymology
The adjective is derived from shab (“(obsolete except UK, dialectal) scaly skin disease; skin disease of sheep; crust forming over wound, scab”) + -y (suffix meaning ‘having the quality of’ forming adjectives). The verb is derived from the adjective. Cognates * Dutch schabbig (“poor, needy, shabby”) * Middle High German schebic (modern German schäbig (“shabby”)) * Middle Low German schabbich (“miserable”) (modern Low German schabbig, schäbbig) * Scots shabby (“in poor health, ill”) * Swedish sjabbig (“shabby, mangy, scruffy”), skabbig (“scabby”)
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈʃæbi/
- British English: /ˈʃæbi/
Usage
Inflected Forms
shabbier (comparative)
shabbiest (superlative)
shabbies (present, singular)
shabbying (participle, present)
shabbied (participle, past)
shabbied (past)