English Dictionary

SHABBY-GENTEEL

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 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 shabbinessplay

  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)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"While the cat is away, the mice will play." (English proverb)

"You must first walk around a bit before you can understand the distance from the valley to the mountain." (Bhutanese proverb)

"If you know then it's a disaster, and if you don't know then it's a greater disaster." (Arabic proverb)

"He who leaves and then returns, had a good trip." (Corsican proverb)



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