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Dowdy   Listen
noun
Dowdy  n.  (pl. dowdies)  An awkward, vulgarly dressed, inelegant woman.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dowdy" Quotes from Famous Books



... had the fever slightly, could be taken away, and he was driving home again, when he overtook Mrs. Duncombe and offered her a lift, for her step was weary. She was indeed altered, pale, with cheek-bones showing, and all the lustre and sparkle gone out of her, while her hat was as rigidly dowdy as Miss Slater's. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and vigorously at the opera. To-day the mellow sunlight crowned her ancient nobleness with a becoming hue, as Gard was jogged along in a roundabout way through the city. Here at the left were the august bridges and great park, all famed in Napoleon's battles. Over there were the dowdy royal palaces. There, too, was the house of the sacred Sistine. Her sweet lineaments shone down in almost every American parlor ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... harder to achieve equal results. People didn't give them jobs in the same way. Young men possessed the earth; young women had to wrest what they wanted out of it piecemeal. Johnny might end a cabinet minister, a notorious journalist, a Labour leader, anything.... Women's jobs were, as a rule, so dowdy and unimportant. Jane was bored to death with this sex business; it wasn't fair. But Jane was determined to live it down. She wouldn't be put off with second-rate jobs; she wouldn't be dowdy and unimportant, like her mother ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... to ask me a question like that. Have I fretted and pined, and forgot to eat and sleep, and gone dowdy and slovenly, because my lover has been fool enough to desert me? Well, then, that is what any other girl would have done. But because I am of thy blood and stock, I take what comes to me as part of my day's work, and make no more grumble on the matter than one does about bad weather. ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... reflections was instantly over, I stole a tip-toe to the passage door, and opening it with a noise, passed for having that moment come home; and after a short pause, as if to pull off my things, I opened the door into the dining room, where I fund the dowdy blowing the fire, and my faithful shepherd walking about the room, and wistling, as cool and unconcerned as if nothing had happened. I think, however, he had not much to brag of having out-dissembled me: for I kept up, nobly, the character of our sex for art, and ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... very modern handwritings came obstinately between my eyes and the matchless wall-paintings—paintings as fresh in their underground hiding-place as if finished yesterday instead of in days when it was dowdy to be pagan, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... Leweezy to th' church, An fowk wink'd an dropt monny a hint, Aw knew tha'd nooan leav me i'th lurch, For a dowdy like her wi a squint. An Ellen at lives at th' yard end, May simper an innocent look, But aw think shoo'll ha' farther to fend, Befoor shoo's ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... for sensible, saving people who want to make every dollar buy its utmost. But sometimes being sensible and saving seems to mean just being commonplace and dowdy. Ours is not that ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther

... lady, and she had a quaint cast in her left eye that gave her the oddest, most sporting look. The cast was working overtime as she gazed at the gowns, and the ridiculous old sprigs on her rusty black bonnet trembled with her silent mirth. She looked like one of those clever, epigrammatic, dowdy old duchesses that one reads about in English novels. I'm sure she had cardamon seeds in her shabby bag, and a carriage with a crest on it waiting for her just around the corner. I ached to slip my hand through her arm and ask her what she thought of it all. I know that her ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... appeared before Mr. Champneys in her new clothes. She thought that if she had been allowed to pick them out for herself, instead of having been hypnotized—"bulldozed" is what she called it—into plain old dowdy duds by two shopwomen and a Jew manager, she'd have given him more ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... Bolton's new Hippopotamus in the place of it. This Hippopotamus is to be the correct thing in pictures this year, and no woman with any claim to be considered smart will fail to have it over her piano. Marcus Stone's new engraving will also be rather chic. Watts's Hope is now considered a little dowdy.' And so forth. This gregarious admiration is the very antithesis of artistic appreciation, which I tell you, simply must ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... have been part of the undertaker's permanent stock-in-trade. Henrietta hated the mournful looks of these ancient cousins, the shaking of their black beads, their sibilant whisperings, and in their presence she was dry-eyed and rather rude. Aunt Caroline would have laughed at them and their dowdy clothes that smelt of camphor, but it seemed as though no one would ever laugh again ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... cork have really been to sea, and seen a good deal of service on the herring-nets, and so they quite take the lead of the smart shop ships, that have never been beyond a pond or a tub of water. But that's an exception. Amateur toys are mostly very dowdy. Look at that box.' ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... clothes. I saw her the first day she came, and was the victim of despair until she suddenly got sick and so couldn't wear those wonderful waists and jackets. I felt like a dowdy when I saw ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... that nice! I declare it's charming! Now look at yourself. Why should you make yourself look dowdy? It's all very well—but you can't be ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... less danger of dislocation, to these pinnacles of passion, by transferring more of the elevated idiom of the style: for, in some of the complicated paragraphs, a too English rendering of the clauses gives the sentiment a dowdy and prosaic air. We should not object to an occasional inversion of the order, even where Jean Paul himself is more direct than usual; for this always appeared to us to lend a racy German flavor to the page. No doubt Jean Paul needs, first of all, to be made comprehensible; but if his style ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... silence, having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty. His own neighbour was Mrs. Vandeleur, one of his aunt's oldest friends, a perfect saint amongst women, but so dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book. Fortunately for him she had on the other side Lord Faudel, a most intelligent middle-aged mediocrity, as bald as a Ministerial statement in the House of Commons, with whom she was conversing in that intensely earnest manner which is the ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... just the style which, after all, does go so far. There's nothing dowdy about her. A dowdy woman would have killed me. She attracted me from the first moment; and, by Jove, old fellow, I can assure you it was mutual. I am the happiest fellow alive, and I don't think there is anything I envy anybody." In all ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... pack'd audience from their posts retir'd, And Julius in a general hiss expir'd, Sage Booth to Cibber cried, "Compute your gains; These Egypt dogs, and their old dowdy queens, But ill requite these habits and these scenes! To rob Corneille for such a motley piece— His geese were swans, but, zounds, thy swans are geese." Rubbing his firm, invulnerable brow, The bard replied, "The critics must allow, 'Twas ne'er ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various

... mire; and she stood and looked at him a while like one about to call; then thought otherwise, sighed, and shook her head, and proceeded on her rounds alone. The house lasses were at the burnside washing, and saw her pass with her loose, weary, dowdy gait. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... deceive us for our good, but they should continue to do so after marriage. 'Pon honor! I have seen the sweetest, most amiable girl turn as sour as could be a few months after the ceremony. The dressiest ones often get dowdy, the most musical can't abide music, the most talkative have the dumps. A man has no chance of judging how they are going to turn out. He is duped by the daughters, inveigled by their mothers, and, what is worse still, as soon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... thought, looking at the flower-stands bright with bloom, and thinking of the social enjoyments that were about to gratify his vanity. "She was made to be the wife of a minister. When I think of his Excellency's wife, and how little she helps him! the good woman is a comfortable middle-class dowdy, and when she goes to the palace or into society—" He pinched his lips together. Very busy men are apt to have very ignorant notions about household matters, and you can make them believe that a hundred thousand francs afford little or ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... give you a few finishing touches before we go," said Marion, a few minutes afterwards, "and I will lend you my green brooch and a veil. You must let me alter your bonnet a little one night next week. There; now you don't look quite so dowdy," said Marion, as she pushed her cousin before the looking-glass after the "few touches" had been given to ...
— Kate's Ordeal • Emma Leslie

... her, as if she were some aboriginal from a wild and distant country, and they shot glances at each other, uneasy, half-jealous, half-envious glances, as they noted the beauty of the face, and the grace of the figure in its black dress, which, plain as it was, seemed to make theirs still more dowdy and vulgar. In the midst of this lugubrious account of the annoyances and worries of the journey, Mr. Heron ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... never feel as if I was dressed right. My things seemed elegant at home, and I thought I'd be over over-dressed if anything; but I look countrified and dowdy here. No time or money to change now, even if I knew how to do it,' answered the other, glancing anxiously at her bright pink silk grown, trimmed ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... Paradise are grateful Under skies serene; But the human type is hateful On a tragic scene; When the outlook's drear and cloudy Punch would rather see you dowdy Than extravagant and rowdy In your dress ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various

... however comfortable otherwise. They were forbidden, or, at all events, lacked the means, to follow out their natural instinct of adorning themselves; all were dressed in one homely uniform of blue-checked gowns, with such caps upon their heads as English servants wear. Generally, too, they had one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar type of features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood. We have few of these absolutely unilluminated faces among our native American population, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... a man may go through life absolutely blind to a patent, obvious, glaring fact, and then suddenly perceive it. Henry perceived that his mother and his aunt were badly dressed—in truth, dowdy. It struck him as ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... disinterested, but generous. The two gowns that you saw Brigitte and Madame Thuillier wear last night were a present from her, and it was because she came herself to superintend the toilet of our two 'amphitryonesses' that you were so surprised last night not to find them rigged in their usual dowdy fashion." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... something in the girl, as one looks at her, that seems to make it very possible she is marked out for one of those wonderful romantic fortunes that history now and then relates. 'Who, after all, was the Empress of the French?' Mrs. Light is forever saying. 'And beside Christina the Empress is a dowdy!'" ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... dowdy get-up is for my benefit, and is not habitual to her!—Or is it, that she has only one costume and keeps it for Sundays and ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... "understanding" mothers, did not need this special inspiration and help, but it was noticeable that girls who had no mothers at all, found in the little, plump, rather dowdy "old maid school teacher" one of those choice souls that God has put on earth to fulfil the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... no Possibility of agreeing with such a one as I have got. You see what a ragged Condition I am in; so he lets me go like a Dowdy! May I never stir, if I an't asham'd to go out of Doors any whither, when I see how fine other Women are, whose Husbands are nothing nigh ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... they are smarter," said Matilda; "and there's nothing on earth so dowdy as an old black coat, But, then, officers are always going away: you no sooner get to know one or two of a set, and to feel that one of them is really a darling fellow, but there, they are off—to Jamaica, China, Hounslow barracks, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... came. After a holiday at Godmother's, she received a hot letter from Mother. Godmother had complained of her looking "dowdy", and Mother was exceedingly cross. Laura was ordered to spend the coming Saturday as well at Prahran, and in her new dress, under penalty of a correspondence with Mrs. Gurley. There was no going against an order of this kind, and with death at her heart Laura prepared to obey. On ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... "I'm a dowdy frump!" she lamented, half-voiced. "I dressed myself while Marie was packing. But you needn't be ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... called for Duperre's wife at the hotel, and she came down wearing a plain, dark-brown motor coat with a small, close-fitting cap to match. She was, indeed, unusually dowdy in appearance. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... old carousal, and with eyes A hard, hot blue; her hair a frowsy flame, Bold, dowdy-bosomed, from her widow-frame She leans, her mouth all insult and all lies. Or slattern-slippered and in sluttish gown, With ribald mirth and words too vile to name, A new Doll Tearsheet, glorying in her shame, Armed with her Falstaff now she takes the town. The flaring ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... have the fewest charms, that they may make something out of nothing. They succeed best in fiction, and they apply this rule to love. They make a goddess of any dowdy. As Don Quixote said, in answer to the matter-of-fact remonstrances of Sancho, that Dulcinea del Toboso answered the purpose of signalising his valour just as well as the 'fairest princess under sky,' so any of the fair sex will serve them ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... girl worked at it; the listless hands dropped their hold of it occasionally, and she was lost in bitter thoughts. She however finished it, and then busied herself with a new bonnet for Peggy, which was to be made not at all fashionable, but big and rather dowdy. Elsie's taste rebelled a little at the uncongenial task; but she was doing her best to please Peggy when the postman delivered two letters to Jane—one from Francis, and the other from Mrs. Rennie. Francis' letters had been frequent, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... them in when their portraits adorn the picture-galleries. With women it is quite different. Woman is born to beautify the domestic circle, woman is always fascinating whether she be dressed up or domestically dowdy, but man is least of ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... of poor Sophia—and very good it is—not that we congratulate Mr Mulready on his Sophia here; she is rather a vulgar dowdy figure, the others are very good, and the incident well told. "A post-chaise and pair drove up to them, and instantly stopped. Upon which a well-dressed man, but not Mr Thornhill, stepping out, clasped my daughter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... Marvin, and there was a hush as the slight girlish figure—and she seemed very young—stood upright before us. She thrust back the unlovely bonnet, and her thin face was flushed; but when, clenching nervous fingers upon the dowdy gown, she raised a high clear voice, every man in the assembly settled himself to listen. Perhaps it was a chivalrous respect for her womanhood, or mere admiration for personal courage, and she had most gallantly taken up the challenge; but I think ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... fashion through Mrs. Vandervoort, and all that is intellectual through Mrs. Latimer, so you see I come in for both. Then if Floyd had married Madame Lepelletier, there would have been another set here. But that little dowdy, who doesn't even know how to dress decently! Common respect ought to ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... Shapely? shapely is not the word for it, she is absolutely beautiful! She is to other craft what,"—here his eye rested upon Miss Onslow's unconscious face for an instant—"a perfectly lovely woman is to a fat old dowdy. There is only one fault I have to find with her, and that is only a fault in my eyes; there are many who regard it as a ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... the tower and spire, after restoration, contrasted so strongly with the "dowdy" appearance of the remainder of the church, that it was little wonder a more determined effort should be made for a general building, and this time (1872) the appeal was no longer in vain. Large donations were given by friends as well as by many outside the pale of the Church, and Dr. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... Robin hesitated for some minutes before ringing the bell. When it had rung he heard the piano stop. For a few seconds there was no sound; then there were steps in the passage and the door was opened by the very dowdy little maid-of-all-work whose hands were always dirty and whose eyes were always red, as though with ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... shall not settle here; I will not suffer such beauties as these to produce children for us to keep."—"Beauties, indeed! your ladyship is pleased to be merry," answered Scout.—"Mr Adams described her so to me," said the lady. "Pray, what sort of dowdy is it, Mr Scout?"—"The ugliest creature almost I ever beheld; a poor dirty drab, your ladyship never saw such a wretch."—"Well, but, dear Mr Scout, let her be what she will, these ugly women will bring children, you know; so that we must prevent the marriage."—"True, madam," replied ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... eat: but men are immoderate in both, as in lust—they covet carnal copulation at set times; men always, ruinating thereby the health of their bodies. And doth it not deserve laughter to see an amorous fool torment himself for a wench; weep, howl for a misshapen slut, a dowdy sometimes, that might have his choice of the finest beauties? Is there any remedy for this in physic? I do anatomise and cut up these poor beasts, [247]to see these distempers, vanities, and follies, yet such proof were better made on man's body, if my kind nature would endure it: [248]who ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... good were there—the sturdy, respectable, and sometimes dowdy good; also the intellectuals—for ten expensive days at a time—for it is a deplorable fact that the unworthy frivolous monopolise all the money in the world! And there, too, were excursionists from East ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... the fields at dawn, and to become distinct and real in many new and unimagined ways. Above all, I was surprised to find myself admiring her who, fifteen years ago, had appeared to me not a little dowdy. She was now fifty-five, but such an age seemed impossible for so girl-like a figure and such young and effusive laughter. I was, however, sure that she was fifteen years older than when I first saw her, but those fifteen years ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... and the painters: he met them at the Century, or at the little musical and theatrical clubs that were beginning to come into existence. He enjoyed them there, and was bored with them at the Blenkers', where they were mingled with fervid and dowdy women who passed them about like captured curiosities; and even after his most exciting talks with Ned Winsett he always came away with the feeling that if his world was small, so was theirs, and that the only way to enlarge either was to reach a stage of ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... alpaca. As a matter of fact, it's a merino, but that doesn't matter. Fancy your remembering my wardrobe like that! And wanting me to wear them all for years! So I shall, dear, secretly, when we are quite quite alone. But they are all out of date already, and if in a year or so you saw your poor dowdy wife with tight sleeves among a roomful of puff-shouldered young ladies, you would not be consoled even by the memory that it was in that dress that you first ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... said Susan: on my life, I'll be no farmer's dowdy wife, To toil and drudge thro' mud and mire: I hope you'll hold your ...
— Think Before You Speak - The Three Wishes • Catherine Dorset

... no style whatever," was Louise's conclusion. "Neither has she tact nor self-possession, or even a prepossessing manner. She wears her new gown in a dowdy manner and one can read her face easily. There's little danger in this quarter, I'm sure, so I may as well be friends ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne

... stout and dowdy—"like a cook with pretty hands," as Stendhal said of her—mattered nothing to her admirers, many of whom remembered her in the days of her lovely youth. She was, in their eyes, as much a Queen as if she ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... filled with gin, whose head barely reaches the counter, the gin-drinking charwoman to the left, and the quarrelsome gin-drinking Irish customers at the back. Everything in this picture reeks of gin; the only persons not imbibing it are the proprietor and his dowdy barmaids, whom I have no manner of doubt the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... think I shall be nice to her," said Letty, playing with a flower on the mantelpiece. "Dowdy people make me feel ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... ship as to the dresses of some of the people, but I thought it was only his way of grumbling at things in general, though certainly I generally agreed with him. He told me one day that my taste evidently inclined to the dowdy, but you see I wore half mourning until ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... sounded vacant. Her bonnet was awry; she was incomparably dowdy. Carol stared at her, felt contemptuous, ready at last to rebel against the trap, and as the rusty goodwife fished again, "Plannin' some more picnics?" she flung out, "I haven't the slightest idea! Oh. Is that Hugh crying? I ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... their recipient had expressed herself perfectly delighted with the delicate, beautiful gift, but, being a true lady, Bart's mother said nothing about the matter to those who would have been glad to spread a little gossip unfavorable to the dowdy ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman

... Spanish from Austrian, Hungarian from Russian or German types. Almost invariably the pretty women and the good-looking men were well dressed. Only the plain and ugly ones seemed not to care for appearances. But there were more plain people than handsome ones; and dowdy forms strove jealously to hide the charming figures, as dark clouds swallow up shining stars. All faces, however, no matter how beautiful or how repulsive, how old or how young, had a strange family likeness in their expression, it seemed to Mary; a tense eagerness, such ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... so long a silence than pleased, Elizabeth felt. But after she had satisfied her curiosity she was kind, beginning to talk about Lizzie, and mentally compared this thin, brown girl with rough hair and dowdy clothes to her own stylish daughter. Then Lizzie burst in. They could hear her calling to a young man who had walked home with her, even before she ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... buy a new evening dress at eight-thirty on Sunday evening. And, anyhow, he said, she looked quite nice, really very smart; besides, Mrs Mitchell was not the sort of person who would think any the less of a pretty woman for being a little dowdy and ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... She removed her dowdy black dress, and, opening a drawer in her wardrobe, took out a soft gray silk which lay folded between tissue paper and sprigs of lavender. She put the dress on, and fastened soft lace ruffles round her throat and at her wrists. The dress ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade

... dowdy! How dare you come here to disgrace me in my own house and premises, after my sending you fifty pounds? To take the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... this way too! George Hawker is one of them; but we can't see who the other is. Who should it be but Mary, though, with whom he should walk, with his arm round her waist talking so affectionately. But see, she raises her head. Why! that is not Mary. That is old Jewel's dowdy, handsome, brazen-faced grandaughter. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... ever bought? Our old peaceful City-life—the vacant Sundays!—my ears are haunted by their bells for Evening Service. I said 'There they go, the dowdy population of heaven!' I remember it now. It should be almost punishment enough to be certain that of all those people going to church, there cannot be one more miserable than we who stood at the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... was lost in wonder, and such was literally the case. He had taught himself to believe that Caroline Waddington was some tall, sharp-nosed dowdy; with bright eyes, probably, and even teeth; with a simpering, would-be-witty smile, and full of little quick answers such as might suit well for the assembly-rooms at Littlebath. When he heard that she was engaged in seeing that the sherry-bottles were duly decantered, the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... yes," Mr Sharnall said. "It looks a little dowdy just this minute, because the chairs are at the upholsterers to have the gilt touched up; we are putting up new curtains, of course, and the housekeeper has already begun to polish ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... a bride is as magnificent as the widow's is depressing and dowdy. It consists of three different dresses, the first of white velvet with apron of moire-antique, the second of purple velvet, and the third of cloth of gold with embroidered sleeves, with a piece of the same material. A wide sash, embroidered with gold, is used for looping up all these resplendent ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... course of it. His horizon widened; society assumed different proportions. There were fair Parisiennes in fresh and elegant toilettes all about him; Mme. de Bargeton's costume, tolerably ambitious though it was, looked dowdy by comparison; the material, like the fashion and the color, was out of date. That way of arranging her hair, so bewitching in Angouleme, looked frightfully ugly here among the daintily devised coiffures which he ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... old lady, with grey hair, and a dowdy bonnet, and an expensive mantle, passed limping, very slowly, along Wedgwood Street and up the Cock Yard towards the Town Hall. Her wrinkled face had an anxious look, but it was also very determined. The busy, joyous Federationists and Anti- ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... would like me to marry? Oh, I know the sort! First, she must be tall and handsome, with red, fashionable hair, and cool, offhand manners. She must never look shy or put out, or as if she did not know what to say. On the contrary, she must know who's who, and what's what, and never wear a dowdy bonnet, but always a stunning hat. And she must have a father who can give her something handsome when she is married. That's my mother's girl for me. I can't bear to look such a girl in the face! She makes me ashamed of myself and of her. ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald

... in the wearing. Who she was I did not know; but I soon learned, for one of the two young women in front of me said a low something to which the other gave back a swift retort, woefully audible: "His wife? That little dowdy thing in brown? Oh, what a pity! Such ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... irony. Her clothes were dowdy, for she had turned the broadcloth dress she had had at her marriage and was wearing it in the street; but if he thought her well dressed, it seemed hardly fair to undeceive him. Had she been any other woman, she reflected, he would probably have looked at her long enough to ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... Besides the melancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little limp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles, and cramp-bones in ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... away you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed, There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road; With its best foot first And the road a-sliding past, An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last; While the Big Drum says, With 'is "rowdy-dowdy-dow!"— "Kiko kissywarsti don't you ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... now quite gay; While the Magpie[89] obtained universal applause, By fluttering a hornpipe upon his hind claws. The Vapourer[90] came not, but he was no loss, For wherever he went he was stupid and cross; And his wife, an old dowdy, bereft of all wings, Was unfit to appear as th' associate of Kings; The Dagger[91] came armed, and looked all around, But his charmer, Miss Snout,[92] was no where to be found, For she had not been asked, and the Figure ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown

... yourself that either 'Lady Veronica' or 'Lady Marjorie' is a member of the aristocracy," chuckled Bessie Kirk. "They're probably most plebeian and dowdy-looking individuals living in Bloomsbury boarding-houses, with pasty complexions and freckled noses, and they get a percentage on the preparations they recommend. If you notice, they always tell you to use Mrs. Somebody's pomade or face cream, ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... prepossessing face; and a pretty little figure—slight and short, but remarkable for its neatness. There was something of her brother, much of him indeed, in a certain gentleness of manner, and in her look of timid trustfulness; but she was so far from being a fright, or a dowdy, or a horror, or anything else, predicted by the two Miss Pecksniffs, that those young ladies naturally regarded her with great indignation, feeling that this was by no means what ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... Olivia. She wished she had gone to her room before tea. These people made her feel dowdy ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... of novels and plays—is a quaint, pedantic person, with spectacles and a beard, but without any passions—except for books. He takes delight in large fat words, but is utterly indifferent to such things as clothes and women—except the dowdy one he married when too young to know better.... It is always so interesting to see ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... the morning, in a room which she shared with a school teacher, Fanny Elmer read Tom Jones—that mystic book. For this dull stuff (Fanny thought) about people with odd names is what Jacob likes. Good people like it. Dowdy women who don't mind how they cross their legs read Tom Jones—a mystic book; for there is something, Fanny thought, about books which if I had been educated I could have liked— much better than ear-rings and flowers, she ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... trimmings she wanted to put on the waist. She thinks she loves lavender, but Joseph's coat would have been a colorless piece of apparel beside her dress if we finally hadn't sat on her and told her certain things couldn't be done. She was crazy to pile on a bunch of ancestral lace, yellow and dowdy; but we told her not much, told her freshness and daintiness suited her style much better, and she wasn't old enough to emphasize ancestral lace, and she blushed and gave in. But nothing would have made her do it if Miss Fannie hadn't ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... to one of Bulwer's heroes, or Disraeli's, or even Thackeray's! And his simple old duke of a father and his dowdy old duchess of a mother are almost as devoid of swagger as himself; they seem to apologise for their very existence, if we may trust these American chroniclers who seem to know them so well; and I really think we no longer care ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier

... soon find out your mistake, my dear," said Aunt Meg from her couch by the fire. "I question if one of your friends will be dressed in so simple and cheap a material. Why, you will be a regular dowdy, and I told Judith so when she showed me her purchase. She could hardly have ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... framework a portion of that chronic disease for which the State has gained for itself an unenviable reputation. Jutting out of the black, moss-vegetating roof, is an old-maidish looking window, with a dowdy white curtain spitefully tucked up at the side. The mischievous young negroes have pecked half the bricks out of the foundation, and with them made curious grottoes on the pavement. Disordered and unpainted ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... sacrifices to her vengeance. Nor was her surprise so much the effect of his dissimulation, as of his want of taste and discernment. She inveighed against him, not as the most treacherous lover, but as the most abject wretch, in courting the smiles of such an awkward dowdy, while he enjoyed the favours of a woman who had numbered princes in the train of her admirers. For the brilliancy of her attractions, such as they at present shone, she appealed to the decision of her minister, who consulted her own satisfaction and interest, by flattering ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... few cast him more than a passing glance. Then they gave an audible gasp, induced by an ingenuous compound of amazement, disappointment, and admiration. They had been prepared to forgive, to endure, to make every allowance. The poor thing could no more help being plain and dowdy than born in Boston, and as their leader had satisfied herself that she "would do," they would never let her know how deeply they deplored ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... "There's my new mauve silk dress! it was a very expensive silk, and I haven't worn it more than three or four times, and it really looks quite dowdy; and I can't get Patterson to do it over for me for this party. Well, really, I shall have to give up company because I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... it's so plain an' dowdy. I've somethin' better than that;' and, looking as pleased as a young girl at his interest in her dress, she went off nodding and smiling at the thought of the pleasure she was going to give him at sight of ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... noise; Cannot play with quiet boys; Cannot play with quiet toys: Rowdy-dowdy loves ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various

... fertile, well-watered gardens. But that unattractiveness is not absolute or real; it is only 'that we should desire Him.' We are but poor judges of true 'form or comeliness,' and what is lustrous with perfect beauty in God's eyes may be, and generally is, plain and dowdy in men's. Our tastes are debased. Flaunting vulgarities and self-assertive ugliness captivate vulgar eyes, to which the serene beauties of mere goodness seem insipid. Cockatoos charm savages to whom the iridescent neck of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... lines of booths, no end; and people selling macaroni, and other people eating it right in the open street, you know—such fun!—and fishermen and fish-wives. Oh, how they were screaming, and oh, such a hubbub as there was! and we couldn't go on fast, and Dowdy seemed ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... indeed. But be careful in learning. Your sister Fanny says the Boston young men stick out their elbows dreadfully when they waltz, and look like owls spinning on invisible teetotums. She declares, too, that all the Boston girls are dowdy. But she is obliged to confess that Mr. Beacon and Mr. Dinks are as well dressed and gentlemanly and dance as well as our young men here. And as for the Boston ladies, Mr. Dinks tells Fanny that he has a cousin, a Miss Wayne, who lives in Delafield, who might alter her ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... Flora McFlimsey," Edith laughs; "I have nothing to wear. There is a white Swiss muslin in my trunk, but it will look wofully rustic and dowdy, I'm afraid, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... mantlet and jockey bonnet of lilac satin checked with maroon. But Dolly had no such weight of by-gone sorrow to balance her present woe, and the things she had left at home were infinitely brighter than that dowdy Faith's. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... from her. She had no remembrance of having seen her mother dressed in that gown or cloak. Besides, she looked so wet and muddy. Where had she come from dressed in that dowdy style. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... know there is no use in talking to you. You will go your own way. Only, as I am in town, do come to my dressmaker's. Though you had your mourning in Paris, do you know, you look quite dowdy. You'll not mind my ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... fact, so far from discouraging the passion for dress among their female dependents, ladies of position and fortune are apt to insist on their dressing smartly. They like to see some of their own lustre reflected on their attendants. A dowdy in sad-colored print or linsey is by no means to their taste. This has been well pointed out in a letter in which a "Maid-servant" replied, through the Pall Mall Gazette, to the project of reform proposed by a "Clergyman's Wife." ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... the acknowledged ornament of the family, employed both her hands in giving her hair an additional wave while sitting in the easiest chair, and occasionally threw in a direction touching the supper: as, 'Very brown, ma;' or, to her sister, 'Put the saltcellar straight, miss, and don't be a dowdy ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... marry some entrancing slip of girlhood, what am I to say when, later, I discover myself irrevocably chained to a fat and dowdy matron? I married no such person, I have indeed sworn eternal fidelity to an entirely different person; and this unsolicited usurper of my hearth is nothing whatever to me, unless perhaps the object of my entire abhorrence. Yet am I none the less compelled to justify the ensuing ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... bursting through the cables of gossamer that tried to stay her. A kestrel hovered over the gorse, and she marked a badger on the hillside shuffling home before Man and his Dogs began the old rowdy-dowdy game once more. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... call upon his tailors. A morning-suit which he had commanded being miraculously finished, he put it on, and was at once not only spectacularly but morally regenerated. The old suit, though it had cost five guineas in its time, looked a paltry and a dowdy thing as it lay, flung down anyhow, on one of Messrs Quayther & Cuthering's cane chairs in the mirrored cubicle where baronets and even peers showed their braces ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... a jot of the real happiness of any portion of my life. When you and I, dear Sook (an awful scowl, and a sudden change of her position, on her costly rocking chair. Fitz looked askance at Mrs. Fitz, and proceeded); when you and I, Susan, lived in Dowdy's little eight by ten 'blue frame,' down in Pigginsborough; not a yard of carpet, or piece of mahogany, or silver, or silk, or satin, or flummery of any sort, the ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... very dull here," she moaned. "I'm afraid you'll be bored to death." And she looked at Mary with her most smilingly cruel expression. "Oh, Mary, why did you put on that dreadfully dowdy frock? I've asked you over and over again to give it away, but you never pay attention to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... 'Maude will never permit it. The unlucky picture has settled that point. Maude will not suffer her to cross the threshold! But for the portrait I could bespeak my cousin's favour and indulgence for a somewhat countrified young girl, dowdy and awkward. I could plead for her good looks in that ad misericordiam fashion that disarms jealousy and enlists her generosity for a humble connection she need never see more of! If I could only persuade Maude that I had done an indiscretion, and that I knew ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... upon her favorite theme, she had forgotten her haste. "She sees at a glance all the good points of a figure; she knows how to bring them out strongly; she discovers by intuition what is lacking, and dexterously hides the defects. I have seen her convert the veriest dowdy into an elegant woman. And, when she gets a subject that pleases her, she perfectly revels in her art. Look at this dress for instance,—see by what delicate combinations ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... being old-fashioned. None would dare to despise her. She was what Hilda could never be, had never long desired to be. She was what Hilda had definitely renounced being. And there stood Hilda, immature, graceless, harsh, inelegant, dowdy, holding the letter between her inky fingers, in the midst of all that hard masculine mess,—and a part of it, the blindly devoted subaltern, who could expect none of the ritual of homage given to women, who must sit and work and stand and strain and say 'yes,' and pretend stiffly that she was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... blouses a year ago were wearing Reform-Kleider, shapeless ill-cut garments usually of grey tweed. The oddest combination, and quite a common one, was a sack-like Reform-Kleid, with a saucy little coloured bolero worn over it, fingerless gloves, and a madly tilted beflowered hat perched on a dowdy coiffure. These are rude remarks to make about the looks of foreign ladies, but the Reform-Kleid is just as hideous and absurd in Germany now as our bilious green draperies were on the wrong people twenty-five years ago, and ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... appellation. "See, now," says Dr. Johnson, "what haste people are in to be hooted. Nobody ever thought of this fellow nor of his daughter, could he but have been quiet himself, and forborne to call the eyes of the world on his dowdy and her deformity. But it teaches one to see at least that if nobody else will nickname one's children, the parents will e'en do ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... bowed, and shook hands with Mrs. Fargus, but were at no pains to conceal their indifference to the drab and dowdy little woman in the soiled sage green, and the glimmering spectacles. 'What a complexion,' whispered Elsie the moment they were outside the door. 'What's her husband like?' asked Cissy as they descended the first flight. Mildred answered ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... us dress, darling, and go down and outshine all these dear, dowdy Englishwomen; and while you are sipping courtesy and gentleness with Lord Fordyce, I shall try to quaff gloriously attractive, aboriginal force with Mr. Arranstoun—but it would have been more suitable to our characters could we have changed partners. ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... Renaissance, till they made him as much the child of folly as themselves. And they painted him as Antinous, as Eros, as Sleep, and I know not what, but whatever name they called him he was always the same lank-haired, dowdy, effeminate, pasty-faced photographer's young man. Then he must needs take to writing poems all about Greece, and the free ways of the old Greeks, and Lais, and Phryne, and therein he made "Aeolus" rhyme to "control us." For of Greek this fellow knew not a word, and any Greek that ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... stand-off which is cleverest. She is quite puzzled sometimes by my frankness about some things, for instance, about her looks. I notice she compliments me on my looks whenever I am decidedly off colour, when I wear a green ribbon, or a dowdy dress, or big shoes. But I am honest with her in these things, and I like to see her look well. The game ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... new bag, and he stepped a bit nearer to her side, as they halted beneath the shining stars, to look back upon what they left behind them. Catia saw the huddled gathering of the village people, already looking a little dowdy to her critical eyes. Scott only saw four faces, grouped in perspective: his mother, tearful, a little tremulous, yet radiant in her full content; behind her, two of the visiting clergy, classmates and chums of the divinity school, and, still behind these two, the eager young ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... two peculiarities of this kind as we stroll about the city, and they are explained to us by our colonial friend. Some extremely dowdy females we see riding in a barouche are the wife and daughters of a high official, who is stingy to his woman-kind, so they say. Two youths we pass are in striking contrast, as they walk along arm-in-arm. One is got up according to the fullest Auckland idea of Bond Street ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... plain, awkward, shrinking girl who was to be his bride the handsome school-boy exclaimed in disgust, "You are surely not going to marry me to that dowdy!" But there was no escape; the demands of "honour" must be satisfied. The ceremony was quickly performed; and within an hour of first setting eyes on each other, the children were separated—Lord March being ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... of "finish," and the tender-hearted bride who, for the sake of their purses sends her bridesmaids to an average "little woman" to have their clothes made, and to a little hat-place around the corner, is apt to have a rather dowdy little flock fluttering down the aisle ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... that he sat there in that quiet room that had once witnessed the trying out of a manly soul, and saw the calm eyes of the plain mother on the wall opposite, and the true eyes of the dowdy school-boy on the other wall, he ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... delicacy, and shunned the perils of the habitual and commonplace. Thoroughly aware she was that as she cheapened herself so did she cheapen love. Never, in the weeks of their married life, had Billy found her dowdy, or harshly irritable, or lethargic. And she had deliberately permeated her house with her personal atmosphere of coolness, and freshness, and equableness. Nor had she been ignorant of such assets as surprise and charm. Her imagination had ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... her out. Ah didn't go to the graveyard though. Ah didn't have a home after she died and Ah wandered from place to place, stayin' with a white fambly this time and then a nigger fambly the next time. Ah moved to Jackson County and stayed with a Mister Frank Dowdy. Ah didn't stay there long though. Then Ah moved to Winder, Georgia. They called it 'Jug Tavern' in them days, 'cause jugs wuz made there. Ah married Green Hinton in Winder. Got along well after marryin' him. He farmed fur a livin' and made a good livin' fur me and the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... save you, and I don't intend you to have any worries except your own. I won't smudge my fingers over the accounts, like that wretched Dora in David Copperfield. Understand that, Howard; I won't be your girl-bride. I won't promise that I won't wear spectacles and be dowdy—anything to be prosaic!" ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... and she even came, but she went back just now. She was dressed terribly fine—gold lace and green silk, but it was old and dowdy; and, Momsy, her cheeks were just as red! I was on the stepladder tackin' up the Bethlehem picture, Sisty was standin' on the high-chair hanging up the star, and Buddy's arms were full of gray moss that he ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... always laughed, and still laughed, but for the fundamental laws of truth, simplicity, and cleanness, upon which the ideal of civilization, at least, is based. She noticed that she was beginning to like "good" persons, even homely, dowdy, good persons, like Alice and George Valentine. She lost her old appetite for scandal, for ugly ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... often been remarked that in the bird world the rule is for the males to have the brilliant plumage, with all the beautiful colors and for the females to be the dowdy ones—a rule which would entail a revolution in fashions, startling and ludicrous, if it were to be introduced for variety among our own kind. Again, gaily-dressed birds have the least pleasing song—the screaming jay bearing ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... 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 two-thirds of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... out as companions; you must do the same. Therefore try and fit yourself for the position.' Everything I did was wrong—according to her, I was rebellious, irreligious, too fond of dress, and lazy physically and mentally. The fact was, I was simply a half-starved, dowdy school-girl—-often hungry for food and always hungry for love. If I had had a dog to talk to I should have been happier. My mother died when I was three years old, and my father two years later. Then, as I told you, I went out as governess to the Warrens when I was nineteen, and ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke

... leading business at the Norwich circuit in 182-; and she herself had played for two seasons with some credit T.R.E.O., T.R.S.W., until she fell down a trap-door and broke her leg); the girls at Fanny's school, we say, took no account of her, and thought her a dowdy little creature as long as she remained under Miss Minifer's instruction. And it was unremarked and almost unseen in the dark porter's lodge of Shepherd's Inn, that this little flower ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... ladies of their social standing, was astonishing. But mark the anomaly: had they been Englishwomen of the same rank and similarly uneducated, they would have been uncouth and ungrammatical in speech, awkward in manner and dowdy in dress. There is no people upon whom the transforming, refining effects of a thorough training are so marked—because, it must be confessed, the native soil so much needs cultivation—as upon the English ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... functions elsewhere. With a rare exception, such as the Duchessa Astarte and the Princess Vessano, whose toilettes were the most chic imaginable, the great ladies of Italy followed fashions very little. Not that Nina found them dowdy—far from it: they had a distinction of their own, which, like that of their ancient palaces, seemed to remain superior to modern decrees of fashion. Nearly all of them had lovely figures, which they did not strive to force into newly ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... choose to ask them. One was Miss Clarke—you know her. She smiled in her usual supercilious manner, but in her case I believe it was only because Miss Clare looks so dowdy. But nobody knows any thing about her except what I've ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... theirs? Alas! our thunder soon goes out; And only makes you more devout. Then is not female clatter worse, That drives you not to pray, but curse? We hardly thunder thrice a-year; The bolt discharged, the sky grows clear; But every sublunary dowdy, The more she scolds, the more she's cloudy. [How useful were a woman's thunder, If she, like us, would burst asunder! Yet, though her stays hath often cursed her, And, whisp'ring, wish'd the devil burst her: For hourly thund'ring in his face, She ne'er was known to burst a lace.] Some critic ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... being half nettled. "Are you going to stop wearing what all the other women wear—and be looked at askance? Are you going to be dowdy and ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... he was still admiring. The approach of Don Miguel and Padre Esteban with a small bevy of ladies, however, quickly changed her thoughts, and detached the Senor from her side. Her first swift feminine impression of the fair strangers was that they were plain and dowdy, an impression fully shared by the other lady passengers. But her second observation, that they were more gentle, fascinating, child-like, and feminine than her own countrywomen, was purely her own. Their loose, undulating figures, guiltless of stays; their extravagance ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... be all he could do to keep from saying this—despite the fact that he knew it would ruin everything. Once little Jennie appeared in a new silk dress, brought to her by one of the rich ladies whose heart was touched by her dowdy appearance. It was of soft grey silk—cheap silk, but fresh and new, and Peter had never had anything so fine in his arms before. It matched Jennie's grey eyes, and its freshness gave her a pink glow; or was it that Peter admired her, and loved her more, and so brought ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... Fair, sir? fair as the immortal Helena! Proud, sir? proud as an arch-duchess! Handsome, sir? handsome, sir, as—as—oh, dammit, words fail me; but go, sir, go and ransack Olympus, and you couldn't match her, 'pon my soul! Diana, sir? Diana was a frump! Venus? Venus was a dowdy hoyden, by George! and as for the ox-eyed Juno, she was a positive cow to this young ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... would do more than pass muster here, she reflected with satisfaction. Indeed, although she was more plainly dressed than most of the women present, she rejoiced to feel she did not suffer too much by comparison. Esther was never dowdy. She was not ashamed of her well-tailored coat and skirt, marron in colour—which went well with her eyes and hair—nor of her little new felt hat, purchased in Paris. Her small choker fur was of good stone-marten, even her gloves and the handkerchief peeping ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... on her head She took the path across the leaze. - Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said, "Too dowdy that, for coquetries, So I ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy

... such a pity that you don't leave these rocks and crags, and live in a town; you will lose all your beauty in this desert. What have you to do with mountains? What satisfaction can your beauty give to a lot of cows? You ought to have been married long ago; not to any of these dowdy women hereabouts, but to some Greek girl; an Argive, perhaps, or a Corinthian, or a Spartan; Helen, now, is a Spartan, and such a pretty girl—quite as pretty as I am—and so susceptible! Why, if she once caught sight of you, she would give up everything, I am ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... Evelyn Chesley's friends and Evelyn's fortune, people would look on Me-Myself in quite a different way. You see, they would judge me by the Outside-Person part of me, which would be soft and silky and secure, and not dowdy ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey

... shall go. I don't want anybody to tell me where I'm to go, my dear, and where I'm not. But it'll be about the first and the last visit. And as for bringing those dowdy girls out in London, it's the last thing I shall think of doing. Indeed, I doubt whether they can afford to dress themselves." As she went up to bed on the Tuesday evening, Miss Macnulty doubted whether the match would go on. She never ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... upon her? why, she is a very dowdy, A dishclout, a foul gipsy unto thee. Come to my closet, lass, there take thy earnest Of love, of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... so dressed up, and hooped up, I ween, They're mothers full often before they're sixteen, And fading and dowdy and sickly at twenty, With one boy in trowsers and two girls in laces Complaining of starving while dying of plenty The fate is of ladies ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]

... dull and dowdy in the spring weather, when the snow drops and the crocuses are putting on their dainty frocks of white and mauve and yellow, and the baby-buds from every branch are peeping with bright eyes out on the world, ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome

... nice as that," said Ermengarde with a jealous look. "There's my dark blue serge, but it will look dowdy ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... promised her was in reality but two poor houses at a crossroads, inhabited by two Mexican men and dowdy women. On the way they encountered but one horseman; Galloway turned his own and Florence's animals out so that, though seen, they might escape recognition. At the nearest of the two hovels he dismounted, raising his arms to her. When she cried out and shrank back ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... strode off to welcome his elderly relative, and when Austin came into the room he found his friend stooping over a very small, very dowdy old lady dressed in rusty black silk, with a large bonnet rather on one side, who was standing on tiptoe, the better to peck at St Aubyn's cheek by way of a salute. She had small, twinkling eyes, a wrinkled face, and the very honestest wig that Austin had ever seen; and yet there was an air and ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... 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 that those things did not matter vitally. She set ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton



Words linked to "Dowdy" :   dowdiness, Baron Hugh Caswall Tremenheere Dowding, marshal, unfashionable, frumpish, Dowding, styleless, marshall, Hugh Dowding, frumpy



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