How to Use dowdy in a Sentence

dowdy

adjective

• She played a dowdy old woman in the film.
• In all the old movies the ministers’ wives are kind of dowdy and stodgy.
  — Lilly Price, Baltimore Sun, 23 Jan. 2023
• The trade-off is dowdy manners on back roads, where the body is controlled but floaty.
  — Sam Smith, Car and Driver, 24 July 2023
• Maybe your powder room has a case of The Sads, with dowdy wallpaper and a timeworn faucet.
  — Kathryn O'Shea-Evans, House Beautiful, 1 Apr. 2021
• There are lace blouses and prim skirts, there are pearl earrings and a dowdy updo.
  — Manuel Betancourt, Variety, 22 Nov. 2022
• Chintzy fabrics, chafing seams and dowdy designs have no place in your wardrobe.
  — Todd Plummer, Robb Report, 16 Nov. 2022
• Nissan's new crossover EV aims to make a stronger statement than the brand's dowdy Leaf hatchback.
  — Tony Quiroga, Car and Driver, 10 Oct. 2022
• In darker colors, this outfit would look dowdy, but our man here has got his shades just right.
  — Aleks Cvetkovic, Robb Report, 21 Jan. 2023
• Between lovely painterly passages, the patched and dowdy hoods smoked cigars, drove around town, worked at easels, and beat themselves up, in both senses.
  — Susan Tallman, The New York Review of Books, 14 Jan. 2021
• The sustainable jeans of recent years have often felt a little stiff, a little dowdy, a little ’90s.
  — Todd Plummer, Robb Report, 4 Nov. 2021
• Finally, with the blessings of his equally wealthy and famous sons, the famous, wealthy man reconnects with the dowdy girl and asks her to marry him.
  — Monica Hesse, Washington Post, 15 Sep. 2022
• Until Raisa came on the world stage, most wives of Soviet leaders were dowdy matrons, confined to the shadows of public life.
  — Jill Dougherty, CNN, 3 Sep. 2022
• The jiggly snack’s logo and packaging are getting a whole new look, their first in a decade, as owner Kraft Heinz looks to revitalize the dowdy brand.
  — Jordan Valinsky, CNN, 27 July 2023
• Like a rushee with a dowdy demeanor, a quirky personality and an empty bank account.
  — John Archibald | [e-mail], al, 26 Jan. 2023
• Colman plays Hilary, a quiet, rather dowdy woman living in an unnamed seaside town in England in the 1980s.
  — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, 7 Dec. 2022
• Usually, cars in this class are dowdy and inconspicuous — just check out a 2016 Sentra.
  — Tribune News Service, cleveland, 12 Mar. 2022
• In some dowdy sectors, though, a bit more corporate activity to shine a spotlight on assets that do tick investors’ boxes could help to turn the tide.
  — Stephen Wilmot, WSJ, 24 Dec. 2021
• The costumes and styling are almost comically dowdy, with Biel in a tight perm and Lynskey enduring possibly the world’s least flattering set of bangs.
  — Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 May 2022
• Catherine is often portrayed as a dowdy, overly pious, stubborn old woman who refused to yield her position for the good of the kingdom.
  — Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 Oct. 2020
• The hammer appears also to have a hairdressing function, transforming Jane’s dowdy brown mop into kicky blond curls.
  — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 5 July 2022
• Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Catherine as hopelessly dowdy, bumbling, and awkward, even within the confines of her own drawing room.
  — Elle Carroll, Vulture, 24 Jan. 2022
• Searching for the right one proved to be a challenge: Most UPF clothing seems designed with serious campers or beachgoers in mind, meaning there’s a plethora of pricey, dowdy, blanket-like rash guards on the market.
  — Malia Griggs, SELF, 30 July 2020
• Chakrabarti also proposed, in the redevelopment of those dowdy, underbuilt blocks, two super-talls, at the corners of Sixth and Seventh Avenues.
  — William Finnegan, The New Yorker, 6 Mar. 2023
• But as the track barrels into the towering chorus, the men rip off Pearson’s dowdy green cardigan to reveal a sleeveless turtleneck, and Moore really puts the power into power ballad.
  — Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 27 Jan. 2022
• Despite the outgoing Tucson's dowdy looks, that compact crossover was Hyundai's bestselling model worldwide.
  — Eric Stafford, Car and Driver, 11 June 2021
• View Photos Chrysler's face lift didn't fix everything, especially the dowdy exterior.
  — Mike Austin, Car and Driver, 15 Apr. 2023
• A certain jadedness may be forgiven the modern child, who is growing up amid sensory dazzlements that can make real life seem dowdy in comparison.
  — Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 16 June 2023
• But the Chinese chain's store—a dowdy counter surrounded by a few simple tables and chairs where a scrum of customers and delivery drivers jostle to pick up orders—couldn't be more different than its American rival's grand emporium.
  — Grady McGregor, Fortune, 22 May 2022
• The members of the men’s soccer team, by contrast, are dowdy ducklings, winning nothing in global competitions and prone to almost comical humiliation.
  — Tunku Varadarajan, WSJ, 17 Nov. 2022
• Instead of a dowdy matron in a lace cap, Patricia Brady’s biography of Martha Washington begins with a painting that used age-regression technology to imagine her as young and alluring woman in a stylish gown.
  — Rebecca Boggs Roberts, WSJ, 17 Mar. 2023

Last Updated: 5 Sep 2024