seedy

adj
/ˈsiːdi/

Etymology

From Middle English sedy, equivalent to seed + -y. The senses with negative connotation, first attested by 1725 in slang, originally especially “poor, out of money”, probably arose from the metaphor of a flower that has gone to seed, and is no longer considered beautiful. From there the word came to be used to describe unwell or past-their-prime people, and parallelly run-down places and by extension low-income or crime-affected urban areas. Compare the figurative expressions go to seed (by 1817), etc., originally in reference to plants, “cease flowering as seeds develop”.

  1. inherited from sedy

Definitions

  1. Literal senses

    Literal senses:

    • Pomegranates are as seedy as any fruit you are likely to see.
  2. Inferior in condition or quality.

    • Sleazy city / Seedy films / Breathing so heavy / Next to my neighbour / Let’s get acquainted
    • The healing power of alcohol / Only works on scrapes and nicks / And not on girls in seedy bars / Who drown themselves in it

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for seedy. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA