Dingy
adj, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 Alternative form of dinghy. alt-of, alternative
- 1 Alternative form of dinghy. alt-of, alternative
- 1 Dark, dull.
"The station has been refurbished both at ground level and below ground, where the wide, fluorescently lit platforms are an almost unrecognisable metamorphosis of the dingy, reeking Low Level of old."
- 2 Resembling or characteristic of a ding. informal, rare
"I love it when they hit. You know the sound when they hit? That dingy sound, it’s like faster, and contained somehow? That’s a great sound. Happens like a fraction of a second before you know what you’ve hit, before you figure it out."
- 3 Shabby, squalid, uncared-for.
"He led her through dingy wareroom after wareroom, counting-house after counting-house, where the clerks all were silent and subdued. He led her at last into a dingy sanctum, dimly lighted by one shaded lamp. In this safe there were piles of dingy papers and more dingy ledgers; […]"
- 1 causing dejection wordnet
- 2 thickly covered with ingrained dirt or soot wordnet
- 3 (of color) discolored by impurities; not bright and clear; ‘dirty’ is often used in combination wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Tom lives in a dingy Boston apartment."
Etymology
From English dialectal (Kentish) dingy (“dirty”), of unknown origin, though probably from Middle English *dingy, dungy, from Old English *dyncgiġ (“covered with dung, dirty”), an umlaut form of duncge, dung (“dung”), equivalent to dung + -y, hence a doublet of dungy.
From ding + -y.
Related phrases
More for "dingy"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.