Lousy

//ˈlaʊ.zi// adj, slang

adj, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Remarkably bad; of poor quality. colloquial

    "No offense, but his cooking is lousy."

  2. 2
    Dirty or untidy. colloquial

    "I cleaned the lousy garage."

  3. 3
    Unwell; under the weather. colloquial

    "I caught a cold and I've been feeling lousy all week."

  4. 4
    Underhanded; mean; contemptible. colloquial

    "I've had enough of lousy backstabbing at this place."

  5. 5
    Infested with lice.
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  1. 6
    Filled or packed (with something, usually bad). colloquial, usually

    "The place was lousy with students."

Adjective
  1. 1
    infested with lice wordnet
  2. 2
    very bad wordnet
  3. 3
    vile; despicable wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
dirtyfilthyabominablealivealive witharrant

Example

More examples

"That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers."

Etymology

From Middle English lousy, lowsy, lousi, equivalent to louse + -y.

Related phrases

lousy evil

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.