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frowsy

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Manage episode 522535151 series 1319408
Content provided by Merriam-Webster. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Merriam-Webster or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 4, 2025 is:

frowsy • \FROW-zee\ • adjective

Something described as frowsy has a messy or dirty appearance.

// The lamp, discovered in a neglected corner of a frowsy antique store, turned out to be quite valuable.

See the entry >

Examples:

“Footage from his early shows is sublime. In one, models with frowsy hair totter along the catwalk in clogs, clutching—for reasons not explained—dead mackerel.” — Jess Cartner-Morley, The Guardian (London), 4 Mar. 2024

Did you know?

Despite its meanings suggesting neglect and inattention, frowsy has been kept in steady rotation by English users since the late 1600s. The word (which is also spelled frowzy and has enjoyed other variants over the centuries) first wafted into the language in an olfactory sense describing that which smells fusty and musty—an old factory, perhaps, or “corrupt air from animal substance,” which Benjamin Franklin described as “frouzy” in a 1773 letter. Frowsy later gained an additional sense describing the appearance of something (or someone) disheveled or unkempt. Charles Dickens was a big fan of this usage, writing of “frowzy fields, and cowhouses” in Dombey and Son and “a frowzy fringe” of hair hanging about someone’s ears in The Old Curiosity Shop. Both senses are still in use today.


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3618 episodes

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frowsy

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

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Manage episode 522535151 series 1319408
Content provided by Merriam-Webster. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Merriam-Webster or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 4, 2025 is:

frowsy • \FROW-zee\ • adjective

Something described as frowsy has a messy or dirty appearance.

// The lamp, discovered in a neglected corner of a frowsy antique store, turned out to be quite valuable.

See the entry >

Examples:

“Footage from his early shows is sublime. In one, models with frowsy hair totter along the catwalk in clogs, clutching—for reasons not explained—dead mackerel.” — Jess Cartner-Morley, The Guardian (London), 4 Mar. 2024

Did you know?

Despite its meanings suggesting neglect and inattention, frowsy has been kept in steady rotation by English users since the late 1600s. The word (which is also spelled frowzy and has enjoyed other variants over the centuries) first wafted into the language in an olfactory sense describing that which smells fusty and musty—an old factory, perhaps, or “corrupt air from animal substance,” which Benjamin Franklin described as “frouzy” in a 1773 letter. Frowsy later gained an additional sense describing the appearance of something (or someone) disheveled or unkempt. Charles Dickens was a big fan of this usage, writing of “frowzy fields, and cowhouses” in Dombey and Son and “a frowzy fringe” of hair hanging about someone’s ears in The Old Curiosity Shop. Both senses are still in use today.


  continue reading

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