sordid
/ˈsɔːdɪd
/adjective
1Involving immoral or dishonourable actions and motives; arousing moral distaste and contempt: the story paints a sordid picture of bribes and scams...
- Fortunately for him, he will not be contemplating his sad and sordid crime from the inside of a prison cell.
- Another motive, the sordid one, is the craving for gossip, particularly the naughty kind.
- The Dutroux case, which uncovered a sordid picture of judicial and political corruption, implicated the highest levels of Belgian society.
Synonyms
sleazy, seedy, seamy, unsavoury, shoddy, vile, foul, tawdry, louche, cheap, base, low, low-minded, debased, degenerate, corrupt, dishonest, dishonourable, disreputable, despicable, discreditable, contemptible, ignominious, ignoble, shameful, wretched, abhorrent, abominable, disgusting
informal sleazoid
2Dirty or squalid: the overcrowded housing conditions were sordid and degrading...
- After 18 months of complaining to various authorities and writing to the Craven Herald, the town hall entrance is still filthy and sordid.
- At present you spend your lives in sordid labour, your abode in filthy slums; your children hunger and your masters say your slavery must endure forever.
Synonyms
dirty, filthy, mucky, grimy, muddy, grubby, shabby, messy, soiled, stained, smeared, smeary, scummy, slimy, sticky, sooty, dusty, unclean, foul, squalid, flea-bitten, slummy
informal cruddy, grungy, yucky, icky, crummy, scuzzy
British informal manky, gungy, grotty
Northern Irish informal bogging
Australian/New Zealand informal scungy
literary besmirched
Derivatives
sordidly
- He examines Flynn's life frankly, but never sordidly.
- Hsiao-kang's compulsive attempts to escape the alienating isolation of Taipei become, then, sordidly futile, tinted ironically with the female's colorless lonesomeness in Paris.
- But there was something sordidly exciting about the offer.
sordidness
- He lived a secretive, closeted life, tormented by illicit desires and guilt at what he called, in one diary entry, ‘the sordidness of much of my past.’
- I think what I was commenting on there was the fact that I despise sordidness and low-life, and avoided it at all costs.
- After calls to 8 or 10 other producers in town, none of whom was willing to get involved with such sordidness, Leslie told them to call me.
Origin
Late Middle English (as a medical term in the sense 'purulent'): from French sordide or Latin sordidus, from sordere 'be dirty'. The current senses date from the early 17th century.