Literary notes about dowdy (AI summary)
The word “dowdy” often appears in literature as a succinct marker for plainness or a lack of stylish appeal, frequently targeting dress or overall appearance. It conveys a sense of being unfashionable, unkempt, or even unattractive, whether applied to a person's attire—as in self-conscious remarks about looking dowdy when choosing old things ([1],[2])—or to objects and settings, such as a shabby vessel ([3]). Sometimes it carries a mild insult, characterizing someone as unsophisticated or unrefined ([4],[5]), while in other contexts it highlights the deliberate contrast between conventional elegance and drabness ([6],[7]). In its varied usage, “dowdy” encapsulates both aesthetic disapproval and a subtle social commentary on decorum and taste.
- "You know you wouldn't like it if I went about in dowdy old things."
— from Half a Hero: A Novel by Anthony Hope - I don't think I could have looked dowdy, and among the dreadful old rags that the girls wear here.'
— from Celibates by George Moore - Ed. 'The dhow's looking rather dowdy,' said Leonora, glancing at the shattered craft.
— from He by Andrew Lang and Walter Herries Pollock - It is high time to leave off being such a dreadful dowdy.
— from Mary Anerley: A Yorkshire Tale by R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore - She is a dowdy little thing, and she had no business to come to my party, anyway."
— from Janice Day, the Young Homemaker by Helen Beecher Long - But I won't wear your uniform; I can't afford to allow the glorious red-white-and-blue to look dowdy, as it would on my unseemly form.
— from Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum - Women's jobs were, as a rule, so dowdy and unimportant.
— from Potterism: A Tragi-Farcical Tract by Rose Macaulay
