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Frowsy   Listen
Frowsy

adjective
1.
Negligent of neatness especially in dress and person; habitually dirty and unkempt.  Synonyms: frowzy, slovenly.  "Frowzy white hair" , "Slovenly appearance"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Frowsy" Quotes from Famous Books



... away of the straw, a young girl sat up. A little bewildered, she divested her head and shoulders of a frowsy straw thatch and stood erect, shaking it off ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... from head to foot, for among that idle, shiftless-looking group, there was not one whom he could possibly mistake for his uncle. They were all fishermen, dull-faced, dirty, and out at their elbows. Some frowsy, ill-clad women had come out of their houses, and, with children clinging to their skirts, ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord

... the fray. The old man gazed full at the frowsy apparition in the doorway. If dagger looks could have stabbed her, the lady would have dropped dead stuck full of as many daggers as a cushion is of pins. The gold headlights suffered eclipse behind a pair of tightly perked lips; and one hand darted ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... horses, and remarked, "I declare, I don't b'lieve I put up that rye flour for Polly Pepper, after all. Well, she'll come back for it, most likely, so I'll get it ready. Three pounds, she said." So he weighed it out, and tied it up, and set it to one side, saying to the frowsy-haired boy who helped him, "Jim, that's Mrs. Pepper's ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... the cement platform of the tavern, kicking our heels against it and bemoaning the follies of youth which had corrupted our Freshman and Sophomore French, there came and sat beside us a pretty woman. She had black snappy eyes, fresh dark skin, and jet black hair, so curly that it was almost frowsy. She listened to us for a moment, then hopped aboard our talk like a boy flipping a street car: "Kansas—eh? I once lived in Oklahoma City. My father ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... and shoulders. Adrian Brownwell, a Gallant, must creak as he struts. Neal Dow Ward, an Infant, must put on long trousers. E. W. Bemis, a Lawyer, must be dignified; Jacob Dolan, an Irishman and a Soldier, must grow unkempt and frowsy. Robert Hendricks, Fellow Fine, must have his blond hair rubbed off at the temples, and his face marked with maturity. Lycurgus Mason, a Woman Tamer, must get used to wearing white shirts. Gabriel Carnine, a Money Changer, must feel ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... like a stout old beggar woman that the children would scarcely have known her. She had covered her left eye with a patch, and now only looked out on the world with her right one. Her hair was knotted untidily under a frowsy old bonnet, and a very thin shawl was bound ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... through the "chute" with just barely room enough between the island on one side and the main land on the other; in this sluggish water she seemed to go like a racehorse; now and then small log cabins appeared in little clearings, with the never-failing frowsy women and girls in soiled and faded linsey-woolsey leaning in the doors or against woodpiles and rail fences, gazing sleepily at the passing show; sometimes she found shoal water, going out at the head of those "chutes" or crossing the river, and ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... on, to judge by the swift turning, the strong resistance of the spools. Not one of the women near me but is degrading to look upon and odourous to approach. These creatures, ill clad, with matted, frowsy hair and hands that look as though they had never, never been washed, smell like the byre. As for the children, I must pass them by in this recital. The tiny, tiny children! The girls are profane, contentious, foul-mouthed. There ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... post, had prevailed against her decision. He himself had met the covered vehicle at his gate, and with calm but forceful courtesy had insisted on their alighting. "Your train is half a day late," said he. "You'll be wiser waiting here than at the frowsy station. Besides, I wish to see this young woman again." So saying, he fairly lifted Miss Arnold from the fur-robed depths of the dark interior, and deposited her on the wind-swept path. "Run in," ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King

... by her narration and putting her hands upon his shoulders familiarly.] Yes, and all the schooling I've ever had, Eddie, was at a cheap, frowsy day-school in Kennington, with a tribe of other ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... the copious English stores of James West, the judicious President of the Royal Society; it was far more refined than the 'omnium gatherum' scattered in 1788 on Major Pearson's death, or Dr. Farmer's ragged regiments of old plays and frowsy ballads, and square-faced broadsides 'bought for ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... along on the shelf, she presently came to the grocer's shop and found the Caravan sitting in a row on a little bench at the door. The Admiral had the Camel in his lap, and they were all gazing at it with an air of extreme solicitude. It was a frowsy little thing with lumpy legs that hung down in a dangling way from the Admiral's knees, and Sir Walter was busily employed trying to make it drink something out of ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl

... during the week in the streets of Potsdam, laden with window-sashes, etc., while on Sunday and holidays the seat where formerly the dying emperor reclined was occupied by the "Herr Tischlermeister" and his frowsy, vulgar-looking "frau." Yet there was not a word of truth in this story. The pony-carriage used by "Unser Fritz" during the closing days of his life is preserved as a species of sacred relic in the imperial coach-house at Potsdam, while the pony leads a life of ease, idleness and equine ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... high-priced hotels until he had things moving again. There would be no more money coming in until the plane was repaired—darn it, there was always that big hump in the trail; always something in the way, something to postpone his grasping at success! Now he'd have to sleep in some hot, frowsy little room for about four bits, instead of luxuriating in a suite as he would like ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... Rembrandt. Here comes an elderly person, evidently George Luk's "My Old Pal," who is balancing a large bundle of sticks on her head. Across the way is a Whistler etching; Whistler did not happen to etch it; but it is a Whistler etching all the same. You look up a frowsy little courtyard, the walls of which are more graceful than plumb, and you see a horse's head sticking out into the etching. Also, across the way the "k" has dropped out of steak on the window of a chop-house. The public-houses ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... and the Jew, and in his 'Jekl: A Story of the Ghetto', he gave proof of talent which his more recent book of sketches—'The Imported Bride groom'—confirms. He sees his people humorously, and he is as unsparing of their sordidness as he is compassionate of their hard circumstance and the somewhat frowsy pathos of their lives. He is a Socialist, but his fiction is wholly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... examined his gun before he followed Dave through the dormer window and passed into the frowsy bedchamber. None of the details of it escaped his cool, keen gaze, least of all the sawed-off ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... is that after passing the Tower the one shore of the Thames begins to lose its dignity and beauty, and to be of like effect with the other, which is the Southwark side, and like all the American river-sides that I remember. Grimy business piles, sagging sheds, and frowsy wharves and docks grieve the eye, which the shipping in the stream does little to console. That is mostly of dingy tramp-steamers, or inferior Dutch liners, clumsy barges, and here and there a stately brig or shapely schooner; but it gathers nowhere ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... remember what an effect clothes have in inciting to personal cleanliness. Let a woman, for instance, don an old soiled or worn wrapper, and it will have the effect of making her indifferent as to whether her hair is frowsy or in curl papers. It does not matter whether her face or hands are clean or not, or what sort of slipshod shoes she wears, for "anything," she argues, "is good enough to go with this old wrapper." Her walk, her manner, the general trend of her feelings, will in some subtle way ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... embroidery and came down to her accustomed rustic arm-chair, smilingly conscious of the perfection of all that pertained to herself, from the soft ringlets on her broad forehead, so different from the stiff, frowsy crimps of the country-girls, to the small Newport ties with their cardinal-red bows, the only bright color about her. She was just beginning to wonder what kept the doctor so long, when, raising her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... pretty, David?" demanded Carol promptly. "I was so relieved. Most of them are so red and frowsy, you know. I've seen lots of new ones in my day, but this is my first experience ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... Campden Hill, and I began to think that for once the game would be against me and that I should get to school late. I tried rather desperately a street that seemed a cul-de-sac, and found a passage at the end. I hurried through that with renewed hope. 'I shall do it yet,' I said, and passed a row of frowsy little shops that were inexplicably familiar to me, and behold! there was my long white wall and the green door that led to the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... gratefully upon ears already ap-palled by the awful silence. Occasionally they scared up a brace of grouse that seemed half benumbed, and hopped about in a melancholy manner under the pines, or a magpie, drawing in its head and ruffling up its feathers against the cold, until it looked frowsy and disreputable. ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... acquaintances—the Russian—shared the dream of a Palestine flowing once more with milk and honey and holy doctrine, was a member of a "Lovers of Zion" society. He was a pasty-faced young man with gray eyes and eyebrows and a reddish beard. He wore frowsy clothes, with an old billy-cock and a dingy cotton shirt, but he combined all the lore of the old-fashioned, hard-shell Jew with a living realization of what his formulae meant, and so the close of Aaron's voyage—till the Russian landed at Alexandria—was softened ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... baked the bread, which formed our unvaried menu week in and week out. Most peasant mothers with a family of nine have no time for idleness, but Mrs M'Swat managed things so that she spent most of the day rolling on her frowsy bed playing with her dirty infant, which was as fat and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin



Words linked to "Frowsy" :   untidy, frowzy, slovenly



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