Meaning of blowsy | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Having a reddish, coarse complexion, especially with a pudgy face.
2. Slovenly or unkempt, in the manner of a beggar or slattern.
3. Unrefined, countrified.

Examples

“They put me in mind of a poor Girl, a Miss Peachy (a real, & in the end, a melancholy Story)—she was a fine young Woman; but thinking herself too ruddy & blowsy, it was her Custom to bleed herself (an Art she had learn’d on purpose) 3 or 4 times against the Rugby Races in order to appear more dainty & Lady-like at the balls, &c”

“[…] with a face made blowsy by the cold and damp.”

“[…] a man of, say, well-preserved sixty, with a blowsy plump face and fat white side-whiskers.”

“Her hair so untidy, so blowsy!”

“The double-breasted blazer which is on every front row this season came with an elbow-length sleeve for spring, while jumpsuits, a signature of the label, came slinky and tailored or in a blowsier boiler suit silhouette.”

“He longed for the warmth and the smells of his favourite haunts—Gilpin's with oysters frizzling in a dozen pans, and noble odours stealing from the tap-room, the Green Man with its tripe-suppers, Wanless's Coffee House, noted for its cuts of beef and its white puddings. He would give much to be in a chair by one of those hearths and in the thick of that blowsy fragrance.”

“The hot, blowsy country, remote from danger, had a lonely, forgotten feeling.”

CEFR level