mangy
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
Pronunciation
Adjective
mangy (comparative mangier, superlative mangiest)
- Afflicted with mange.
- (by extension) Worn and squalid-looking; bedraggled or decrepit.
- 1899 April, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number MII, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part III (Conclusion):
- When we came abreast again, they faced the river, stamped their feet, nodded their horned heads, swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook towards the fierce river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin with a pendent tail— something that looked a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic litany.
Translations
afflicted with mange
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worn and squalid-looking; bedraggled or decrepit — see also shabby
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Further reading
- “mangy”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.