seedy
Meanings
Adjective
- full of seeds
- "as seedy as a fig"
Adjective Satellite
- shabby and untidy; ; - Mark Twain
- "he was soiled and seedy and fragrant with gin"
- somewhat ill or prone to illness
- morally degraded; ; ; ; - Seattle Weekly; - James Joyce
- "a seedy district"
Adj
- Literal senses:
- Containing or full of seeds.
- Literal senses:
- Seedlike; having the flavour of seeds.
- Literal senses:
- Having a peculiar flavour supposed to be derived from the weeds growing among the vines; said of certain kinds of French brandy.
- Inferior in condition or quality.
- Shabby, run-down, possibly connected with bad, dishonest or illegal activities, somewhat disreputable.
- Inferior in condition or quality.
- Untidy, unkempt.
- Inferior in condition or quality.
- Infirm, unwell, gone to seed.
- Inferior in condition or quality.
- Suffering the effects of a hangover.
Origin / Etymology
From Middle English sedy, equivalent to seed + -y.
The senses with negative connotation, first attested by 1725 in slang, originally especially “poor, out of money”, probably arose from the metaphor of a flower that has gone to seed, and is no longer considered beautiful. From there the word came to be used to describe unwell or past-their-prime people, and parallelly run-down places and by extension low-income or crime-affected urban areas. Compare the figurative expressions go to seed (by 1817), etc., originally in reference to plants, “cease flowering as seeds develop”.
Synonyms
ailing, indisposed, peaked, poorly, scruffy, seamy, sickly, sleazy, sordid, squalid, under the weather, unwell
Antonyms
Scrabble Score: 9
seedy is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordseedy is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
seedy is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary