-bē, -bi adjective
( -er/-est )
Etymology: obsolete English shab scab + English -y
1.
a. : threadbare and faded from wear : appearing outworn
shabby finery
saved fragments of lace from her dresses when they became too shabby for use — American Guide Series: Maryland
b. : ill kept and worn out : poor , decaying, dilapidated , neglected
shabby , unpainted shacks, dropping with decay — Van Wyck Brooks
shabby wallpaper
a shabby neighborhood
2. : clothed with worn or seedy garments
an uncommonly comic doctor, shabby alike in dress and ethics — Brooks Atkinson
when he … saw the smartly dressed clerks standing before the stores, he looked at his own shabby person and was ashamed to enter — Sherwood Anderson
3.
a. : mean , paltry , despicable
the Nazis, for all the terrible damage they have done, may turn out to be the shabbiest villains in history — New York Herald Tribune Book Review
all the efforts of propagandists … could not make the war anything but shabby in its origin — D.W.Brogan
b. : ungenerous , unfair , dishonorable
laments the shabby way in which this country often treated a poet so deeply devoted to it — Paul Engle
concerned both with the dearth of teachers and with the shabby scale on which they are paid — Pleasures of Publishing
the opinions of the man on the street … are a motley of hand-me-downs, baggy generalities, and shabby prejudices — H.J.Muller
both parties played furious and sometimes shabby politics — Time
she drifts into a shabby and then a shabbier love — Carl Van Doren
the explorer's mistress shows up with the shabby truth of the man's life — Henry Hewes
c. : evincing scant liberality or generosity
a shabby allowance
a shabby gift
had paid a very shabby dividend — W.M.Thackeray
d. : inferior in quality : slovenly
a shabby lot of fighting men, as their captured officers contemptuously admitted — New Yorker
a member of a shabby theatrical troupe which tours the provinces — Donald Heiney
his reasoning is weak, even shabby — J.T.Farrell
Synonyms: see contemptible