SHABBY-GENTEEL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does shabby-genteel mean? 

• SHABBY-GENTEEL (adjective)
  The adjective SHABBY-GENTEEL has 1 sense:

1. trying to maintain dignity and self respect despite shabbiness

  Familiarity information: SHABBY-GENTEEL used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SHABBY-GENTEEL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Trying to maintain dignity and self respect despite shabbiness

Similar:

proud (feeling self-respect or pleasure in something by which you measure your self-worth; or being a reason for pride)

 Context examples 

The public, represented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby-genteel man secretly eating crumbs out of his coat pockets, was warming itself at a stove in the centre of the Court.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

It was a poky, little, shabby-genteel place, where four lines of dingy two-storied brick houses looked out into a small railed-in enclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass and a few clumps of faded laurel bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and uncongenial atmosphere.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)