SLOVENLY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does slovenly mean? 

• SLOVENLY (adjective)
  The adjective SLOVENLY has 1 sense:

1. negligent of neatness especially in dress and person; habitually dirty and unkempt

  Familiarity information: SLOVENLY used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SLOVENLY (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Negligent of neatness especially in dress and person; habitually dirty and unkempt

Synonyms:

frowsy; frowzy; slovenly

Context example:

slovenly appearance

Similar:

untidy (not neat and tidy)

Derivation:

sloven (a coarse obnoxious person)

slovenliness (habitual uncleanliness)

slovenliness (a lack of order and tidiness; not cared for)

 Context examples 

And he has some taste in dress, though he gets slovenly if I am too long away from him.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish—read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

When driven with his mates to the new owners’ camp, Buck saw a slipshod and slovenly affair, tent half stretched, dishes unwashed, everything in disorder; also, he saw a woman.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

You shave every morning, and in this season you shave by the sunlight; but since your shaving is less and less complete as we get farther back on the left side, until it becomes positively slovenly as we get round the angle of the jaw, it is surely very clear that that side is less illuminated than the other.

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

Martin glanced at her and verified her statement in her general slovenly appearance, in the unhealthy fat, in the drooping shoulders, the tired face with the sagging lines, and in the heavy fall of her feet, without elasticity—a very caricature of the walk that belongs to a free and happy body.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Our liturgy, observed Crawford, has beauties, which not even a careless, slovenly style of reading can destroy; but it has also redundancies and repetitions which require good reading not to be felt.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

It took them half the night to pitch a slovenly camp, and half the morning to break that camp and get the sled loaded in fashion so slovenly that for the rest of the day they were occupied in stopping and rearranging the load.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)