How To Use Shabby In A Sentence

His clothes were old and shabby.
The men are dressed in shabby, quilted jackets; they are bareheaded and barefoot.
Why does he think her shabby treatment of you is acceptable?
Poor bantam building block, what had you ever done since the beginning of time and space to deserve such shabby treatment?
Perhaps something dirty, something shabby. Times, Sunday Times

If that is her calculation, it is a shabby one. Times, Sunday Times
The stage was marvellously decorated to look like a shabby pub with its bar stools, spongy seats, Guinness mirrors and jukebox.
There was a panic in Dhurrumtolla; a "ticca-gharry" -- the shabby oblong box on wheels, dignified in municipal regulations as a hackney carriage -- was running away. Hilda A Story of Calcutta
If Huck had felt ‘ornery’ and insignificant in the face of Providence Jim is capable of the same emotion when he recalls his shabby treatment of Elizabeth.
From these places emerged the "beatniks", typically dressed in shabby clothes, sporting a beard and wearing sunglasses at all hours.
On another occasion Heine writes that Kalkbrenner is envied for his elegant manners, for his polish and sweetishness, and for his whole marchpane-like appearance, in which, however, ihe calm observer discovers a shabby admixture of involuntary Frederic Chopin as a Man and Musician
There's a shabby chic feel, alongside some contemporary touches. Times, Sunday Times
Not too shabby, but at the turn is usually the point where I would run into trouble.
She looked at his shabby clothes with distaste.
Underneath some shabby canvas tarps on the cargo deck were stacked a dozen bulky mattresses and twenty thick pine boards.
The shabby man stooped and took off his boots. What the Bee Knows - reflections on myth, symbol and story
But side by side with that history of inflation from the infinitesimal to the immense is another development, the change year by year from the shabby impecuniosity of the Camden Town lodging to the lavish munificence of the Crest Hill marble staircase and my aunt's golden bed, the bed that was facsimiled from Fontainebleau. Tono Bungay
The wealthy foreigners who like this part of town are not impressed by shabby chic. Times, Sunday Times
And when some of the finer diners cast a disdainful eye upon their shabby, old-fashioned dresses, the two women merely giggled and stared right back at them.
For example, exterior paintwork has been flaking, giving a shabby appearance to the city's last traditional picture house.
All were equally worn with work and dressed in shabby clothing, layered with tears and patches.
We are running short of food, our uniforms are shabby and dull, our shoes are full of holes, and we are also short on ammunition.
Unfortunately, it makes the front stage curtain look shabby.
This shabby opportunism follows a script devised long before the election defeat. The Sun
This script began with Aunt Lilian's release from the shabby asylum in which she had been held for decades.
This shabby opportunism follows a script devised long before the election defeat. The Sun
When confronted with the reality of a shabby and hostile England unlike the England of her dreams, she is utterly horrified.
A small neat iron bed with a shabby well-washed coverlet had one lumpy pillow and sheets which were hard to the touch.
We practised as attorneys-at-law in Johannesburg in a shabby building across the street from the Magistrates 'Court. OLIVER TAMBO
I used a shabby trick to get out of the engagement: I can't blame her for feeling aggrieved. STAGE FRIGHT
The courtyard was shabby, with dying plants, chipped and broken statuary. THE GOLDEN LION
Come to think of it, not so long ago even Puccini was trashed by superior people, who considered his contemporaries decadent, shabby frauds beneath contempt.
Underneath some shabby canvas tarps on the cargo deck were stacked a dozen bulky mattresses and twenty thick pine boards.
General Marmora -- a thin, shabby, energetic man -- was everywhere; for the new order of things seemed a little hitchy. Shawl-Straps A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag
It is a shabby and disrespectful epitaph for the tweedy old Bernard Quatermass and his adventures, which date back almost to the advent of television.
A shabby-looking carriage stood in the path outside the Lucas's home. THE RIVAL QUEENS: A COUNTESS ASHBY DE LA ZOUCHE MYSTERY
Even now, dressed in shabby jeans and a torn shirt and smelling strongly of creosote, she was lovely. HIDING FROM THE LIGHT
The energy industry's treatment of its loyal clientele is shabby. Times, Sunday Times
Their palaces are shabby, with threadbare carpets and dreary flower arrangements. Times, Sunday Times
The men are dressed in shabby, quilted jackets; they are bareheaded and barefoot.
Nancy lives in this perfect world where everything's from Shabby Chic and looks really beautiful and I grew up in this kind of grungy Venice world with my parents and there was never a lot of money thrown around. Brad Balfour: Exclusive: Zoe Kazan's Acting "Explodes" with "A Behanding"
When the swinging Sixties brought a revival, the shabby stables found themselves transformed into chic, bijou dwellings for artists, authors and those with general designs on being fabulous.
‘Their increasingly shabby treatment of people like me is one of the reasons their results are in a tailspin,’ said my friend.
Still, the ambiance was wonderful: comfortably bohemian, chicly shabby, unfussily inviting and many other jolly terms designed to defuse my wife's urges toward home improvement. Blessings of the Season
Like shabby houses and land allotments. Times, Sunday Times
The first walk has a few small hills, the second walk is largely flat, but on a shabby wintery day was a bit dull and uninspiring.
shabby treatment
Eventually, the guy who used to mend the fence and keep things neat doesn't anymore, and some corporation discovers a vein of a minable resource on the land under the unicorn, and since no one's bothered to come look at the unicorn in a long while, they airlift him to a shabby zoo somewhere in Europe looking to increase its ailing reputation. Pornography Is A Washed-Up Unicorn
‘Got a letter here I'd like to be mailed,’ the young man said handing the letter to the short stocky man sitting on a small cot in the shabby tent.
An elderly man in a shabby black overcoat and wide-brimmed beaver hat was standing in front of the magistrate's desk, clutching a newspaper in one hand and dabbing his eyes with a none too clean handkerchief.
a shabby little hussif, containing a thimble, scissors, needles and some skeins of unbleached thread. The Wings of the Morning
Removing his rather shabby cloak to reveal a more respectable outfit underneath, Maddock spied a nearby servant carrying a tray of food.
Despite his sometimes shabby behavior, he has nobility of spirit compared to the bigger-budget showbiz types who are his rivals.
It was a shabby, straggly, unkempt little regiment, their faces chapped, their noses running in the cold.
I felt quite shabby in my plain cream-coloured gown next to the finery of the other ladies.
I lived there for some time; and was very shabby and dirty. The Water Babies
Northumberland are lusty fellows, fresh complexioned, cleanly, and well cloathed; but the labourers in Scotland are generally lank, lean, hard-featured, sallow, soiled, and shabby, and their little pinched blue caps have a beggarly effect. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
There were soldiers everywhere by now, shabby-looking in peak caps set askew and ill-fitting camouflage.
In his shabby Cologne apartment in 1973, Brinkmann used rudimentary means to improvise on a few scraps of paper.
Underneath some shabby canvas tarps on the cargo deck were stacked a dozen bulky mattresses and twenty thick pine boards.
The poor consul got a lamp for us with a bit of wax-candle, such as I wonder his means could afford; the shabby janissary marched ahead with his tin mace; the two laquais-de-place, that two of our company had hired, stepped forward, each with an old sabre, and we went clattering and stumbling down the streets of the town, in order to seize upon this cadi in his own divan. Notes of a Journey From Cornhill to Grand Cairo
His shabby appearance creates a bad impression.
You look rather shabby in those clothes.
For years, the top brands have been reluctant to give him their best lines for fear they will be aggressively discounted or displayed in shabby environments. Times, Sunday Times
He habitually wore shabby tweeds and a cloth cap of the kind favoured by Cockney barrow boys, also by country squires.
Occasionally we would pass a larger cross-street with a shabby grocery store, liquor store, a pawnshop or two, and a cafe. DOWNTOWN
REMEMBER when a bank was a shabby grey building and the only person giving advice was a real bank manager in a stuffy office? The Sun
Of course, it's all wonderfully shabby chic, with several large holes in the carpet and inadvertent additions from the couple's small black pug, which waddles about, snorting and, occasionally, weeing.
I felt quite shabby in my plain cream-coloured gown next to the finery of the other ladies.
It was small, cheap, and shabby, but she had still called it home for the last few years.
His whole appearance gave one the idea of impudence; his dress was shabby. The Idiot
She's a shabby infant among lawyers clad in immaculate coal-coloured, pleated robes.
Why give tacit approval to the shabby treatment meted out to savers? Times, Sunday Times
Back in the shabby little suburban house in Carrollton Gardens, she could have spoken, but then she had remained silent. LOST BOY LOST GIRL
Its shabby-chic rooms in a former smokehouse are very, very cool. Times, Sunday Times
shabby furniture
In one world she was a chambermaid who lived with Simone in a shabby garret room. LASTING TREASURES
London looked shabby and beautiful in its enormous emptiness, like a vast illuminated scrubland. THE EXECUTION
The outside of the house was beginning to look shabby.
The poor consul got a lamp for us with a bit of wax-candle, such as I wonder his means could afford; the shabby janissary marched ahead with his tin mace; the two laquais-de-place, that two of our company had hired, stepped forward, each with an old sabre, and we went clattering and stumbling down the streets of the town, in order to seize upon this cadi in his own divan. Notes of a Journey From Cornhill to Grand Cairo
Now they can choose from softer, shabby chic styles to sophisticated uses of toile, cashmere, leather and shearling.
No less shabby is the cynical way the banks used the courts as a delaying tactic. Times, Sunday Times
He was smiling and waving at the onlookers, wearing a shabby business suit with an exceptionally loud tie.
We lived in a shabby hut at the foot of a steep mountain on the border of Manchuria near the Yalu River.
On the basis of this match the present looks none too shabby either. Times, Sunday Times
Travelers now arrive from all quarters, in cabriolets, in calashers, in the shabby "vettura," and in the elegant private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by postillions in the tightest possible deer-skin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One)
As the audience entered the stage was set up as a shabby music room: there was a straight-backed piano upstage right and various basic wooden chairs arranged with music stands.
At what point do we take that ignominious, shabby route down from the moral high ground to defend a Labour government?
Right across your life people realise you will not accept shabby treatment. The Sun
If done well, and if the old landscaping was getting shabby, the improvement in appearance can have a large impact on the resale value of the house.
said the man in the corner - shabby, pot-bellied, with a pink complexion and hands perpetually grimed from reading too much newsprint. POLITICAL SUICIDE
Do you really feel like you've escaped shabby housing, nosy neighbors and haggling with the fishmonger?
The Serbo-Croatians, for instance, picked up the English word nylon, but took it to mean a kind of shabby and disreputable variation, so that a nylon hotel is a ` brothel 'while a nylon beach is where nudists frolic. VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XVII No 4
All eyes turn to this shabby remnant, but they remain immovable, with the leaden expression belonging to the victims of the Confederate lexicon, that seems to say, unaccused, '_I am not ashamed. The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 Devoted To Literature And National Policy
If you can find a gnarled peasant woman making shabby artefacts from twigs, point your readers in her direction.
We miss its toe-curling political incorrectness, its shabby vulgarity, its embarrassed actors, and its toilet-roll scripts.
He's slumped on the sofa, the lithe body swamped by a shapeless and shabby burgundy cardigan held together with a giant safety pin.
Finally, on the biographical debit side there are the usual miscellaneous acts of thoughtlessness, rudeness and generally shabby behaviour.
Last year I came back again and found, to my dismay and disappointment, a shabby, untidy and uncared for cluster of poorly kept houses with shocking colour schemes.
How shabby and disreputable is this party which aspires to wrap itself in the British Flag. Labour's Falkland's Shame
Shabby, grubby and stale, even visiting friends from other shared houses would wonder out loud how we could tolerate living there.
Besides, too many knickknacks are more shabby than chic. Globe and Mail
He came in, a scruffy, even shabby figure in old blazer and grey shorts. COFFIN ON THE WATER
By all accounts, the denunciations of shabby treatment by various news and current affairs programs come from around the room.
His threadbare case further exposed the shabby deal.
My answer to that accusation is that there is nothing shabby or disgraceful in telling writers the truth and acquainting them with the painful facts of publishing life.
Two only of the vagrant tribe the boy dislikes, the colporteur and the travelling Spiritualist -- two cold, shabby, sniffling beings, each wrapped in a shawl and each driving an old horse afflicted with poll-evil. Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878
The new facility, with air con, treadmills and an aerobics studio, bears little resemblance to the sparse and shabby termite-infested sweatbox above an off-licence that the brash young boxer, then named Cassius Clay, walked into five decades ago, and which eventually produced 12 world champions under Dundee's tutelage. Emotional 5th Street return for Muhammad Ali
You look rather shabby in those clothes.
But in the field of dendroclimatology, where there has been such egregious violation of the normal scientific practices, I am absolutely blown away that you would not be extra careful not to be associated in any way with the kind of shabby, slip-shod data practices that have been decried by everyone from the blogs to the mainstream media to the journals to a variety of scientific committees. Wilson et al 2007 « Climate Audit
Soon his mother will realize that I am unprepared to feed her son, that the few shabby pots and pans we have have lain cold amidst eat-out dates and prepackaged yummies.
I turn now to that commentary: a series of moments when the encounter of well-heeled bibliomaniac and shabby-genteel minor Romantic seems to make them each other's mirror images, united by a common unwillingness to conceive of books as something we might assimilate as pure mental phenomena, and a readiness to allow literariness to be effaced by the volumes that lodge it. "Wedded to Books': Bibliomania and the Romantic Essayists
My dilapidated apartment didn't seem quite so shabby, the shops, not so familiar.
Migrant workers often have to suffer being despised and laughed at and they are also associated with shabby clothes, vulgar behaviour and criminal activity.
There's a prim prioress, a pardoner in shabby green velvet, an enigmatic woman in fur-trimmed crimson.
If the rest of the world isn't getting this kind of shabby treatment, why should we?
Shabby buildings stand next to stylish apartments and craft centres giving the game a gritty image and inner-city feel to appeal to a trendy audience.
Always fashionable, I went with a shabby chic motif for my coop.
Give me a new toothbrush and I can widdle the thing down to nothing but a shabby nubbin of its former self within three days, using nothing but my teeth and gums.
She is not the only one to be scandalised by our Government's shabby treatment of the legendary soldiers. The Sun
Few argue with the need to improve the shabby eyesore which blights much of Piccadilly.
A photo captures Dean grinding at the barre, looking none too comfortable, but not too shabby, either, in terms of his placement. Debra Levine: James Dean Broods... and Dances
The hospital wards are shabby and rundown, staff spend as much time filling out forms as dealing with patients, everyone is overworked and over stressed.
We are in the backyards of two maladjusted households in adjoining row houses in a shabby South Philadelphia Italian-American neighborhood.
But in the original double album, and in the Who's live performances of the work, they created a musical earthquake that opened cracks in the complacency of a shabby-genteel culture. From The Who To The Whom
She told her name, and was shewn, by a little shabby footboy, into a parlour. Cecilia
They wore shabby clothes and their feet were bare.
Underneath some shabby canvas tarps on the cargo deck were stacked a dozen bulky mattresses and twenty thick pine boards.
It's shabby behaviour and you could just end up losing both. The Sun
He was handsome, and he knew that he was handsome; but he affected to despise the beauty of his proud dark face, as he affected to despise all the brightest and most beautiful things upon earth: and yet there was a vagabondish kind of foppery in his costume that contrasted sharply with the gentlemanly dandyism of the shabby gamester sitting at the table. Birds of Prey
Beside it stood a person in shabby clothes with his thumb out, hoping to hitch a ride. Christianity Today
Off we went through shabby lanes of light industrial shops in cold concrete with steel shutters. The Tribes Triumphant
The rusty door debouched into a small office with a shabby desk and a dented metal file cabinet. DBTL 21: A Post About Nothing
Her thin hair was plated in braids and her taffeta dresses looked shabby beside Geneva's pink organdie frock with her golden hair elegantly twisted atop her head in curls.
The man pointed ta a trim craft which looked a little shabby but only for want of paint. THE CLUE IN THE OLD ALBUM
How shocking, then, to see this once-magnificent interior reduced to a shabby, grubby mess.
The other house got old and shabby, and that cut into the value.
It had been neither strikingly new, nor utterly shabby, neither napless nor over-glossy, and might have passed for the hat of a frugally given owner, but its artificially prolonged existence had now reached the final stage, it was crumpled, forlorn, and completely ruined, a downright rag, a fitting emblem of its master. The Magic Skin
One: denim culottes with one of our moss-green shabby-chic tweed blazers, a huge brooch and green-gold tango shoes.
There are pretty regular shuttles between the various hills, and, of course, après-ski in the village of Saint-Sauveur is none too shabby.
He said: ‘I have already had two fox hounds masters on the phone today to say it's a shabby deal.’
Reminding himself that there was nothing to fear he set off, past the loose boxes with their heaps of shabby treasure.
The outside of the house was beginning to look shabby.
She wore shabby old jeans and a T-shirt.
The old shabby church showed, as usual, its quaint extent of roofage and the relievo skeleton on one gable, still blackened with the fire of thirty years ago. Lay Morals
The Mueller tactical in 4. 5-14 lists at 2 $220. the Nikon buckmaster in the magnification range with mil dots is about $289. for a rifle with fairly low kick, the BSA platinum in 8-32 isn't too shabby. Best :Prairie Dog Scope $150-$400
AaronG the youngest one isn't too shabby-looking. she can take care of me if she has such a need. puttu onblast your moms not hackin it any more? Cat Ladies Movie Trailer | /Film
There were soldiers everywhere by now, shabby-looking in peak caps set askew and ill-fitting camouflage.
Pools and the buildings became shabby; even the water quality suffered.
I think it's so shabby when rows of tricolours are rotting away.
Rather it is bleak, with the small precinct of shops shabby and some of the houses in poor condition. Times, Sunday Times
It nonetheless seems to me pretty shabby of it not to have included at least something in respect of interest. Times, Sunday Times
Shabby suburban streets are suddenly relieved by an almost strident red building, crisply detailed and well tended.
The West denounced the East as a desert of slab blocks, shabby, inferior and authoritarian, and feared a 'rehabilitation' of the rigorous social agenda.
He was an eccentric mixture, a novelist of talent but a pamphleteer of genius, an aesthete whose trademark was gritty realism, a radical socialist with a conservative nostalgia for the shabby-genteel England of his Edwardian childhood. The saint of common decency
Bothered by lack of funds and the fear of a ‘shabby, stingy bimillenary,’ Novelist Jules (Men of Good Will) Romains resigned his job as head of the planning committee to celebrate Paris’ 2,000th anniversary next year.
He agreed that some of the trains look shabby even after a good clean because many of them are about forty years old.
For the past three years this club has been mismanaged and run in a totally shabby way. Times, Sunday Times
He showed us his favorite statue, that of an old philosopher turned mendicant, and I think I shall always associate him - in his shabby but clean old gray suit - with this particular piece of Buddhist statuary.
I knew it was shabby of me, but I couldn't help feeling slightly disappointed.
It was a poky, little, shabby-genteel place, where four lines of dingy two-storied brick houses looked out into a small railed-in enclo - sure, where a lawn of weedy grass and a few clumps of faded laurel-bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and uncongenial atmosphere. Sole Music
At school, a big Paris lycée, my shabby clothes made me even more of an outsider. COASTLINERS
Their palaces are shabby, with threadbare carpets and dreary flower arrangements. Times, Sunday Times
She came to a particularly shabby house and started to walk up the front path overgrown with moss.
Crook was feeling decidedly shabby by this time, but luckily Bobby mistook his discomfiture for shyness. STAGE FRIGHT
Because if arguably the world's biggest physics experiment is in any way a cathedral to science, then it is an unusually utilitarian and rather shabby one. Times, Sunday Times
He buys his shabby clothes in charity shops. The Sun
He died in a shabby Roman hotel the year after that regime had perished.
The old house has grown shabby with age.
Her shabby appearance drew sniggers from the guests.
Lola herself has doffed her shabby robe and is wearing a gaudy dress patterned with large flowers.
Hugh's jacket was old and shabby.
He wore a shabby pair of green slacks made from synthetic fibre and flared from the knee down, a green t-shirt and a pair of cast-off track shoes from a former client.
While dealers in "shabby chic" vintage furniture are quids in, and the internet trade in original Danish modernist furniture is booming on auction sites such as eBay, Habitat has signally failed to establish itself as the home of good contemporary design. A new era for Habitat … 'How can we trade with three shops?'
Lord Danesbury read Atlee's letter with an enjoyment not unlike the feeling an old sportsman experiences in discovering that his cover hack -- an animal not worth twenty pounds -- was a capital fencer; that a beast only destined to the commonest of uses should actually have qualities that recalled the steeplechaser -- that the scrubby little creature with the thin neck and the shabby quarters should have a turn of speed and a 'big jump' in him, was something scarcely credible, and highly interesting. Lord Kilgobbin
The shiny black Porsche purred through the slightly shabby suburb.
Mniszech clan was a shabby affair, neither bold andbig like the Granicki castle nor sumptuous like Lancut. Poland
No less shabby is the cynical way the banks used the courts as a delaying tactic. Times, Sunday Times
The wealthy foreigners who like this part of town are not impressed by shabby chic. Times, Sunday Times
His one spiritual ally is an outcast like himself: a dignified, ageless, diffident, white-haired refugee in rimless spectacles and a shabby suit who teaches German Extra Studies and cello and lives alone in a redbrick bedsitter on the Bristol Road roundabout. Absolute Friends
A woman I know who moved from the United States to England was showing me around her neighborhood in London when we came upon a shabby-looking man collapsed on the sidewalk. The Bowery Scene (memoir, 1981)
It was shabby, obviously neglected, and unlived in, but it had certain magic about it, which captured both my imagination and my heart. Mi Pullman: remodeling a Mexican Art Nouveau townhouse I
David Cameron's favourite thinktank, Policy Exchange, published a book-length condemnation which claims that The Spirit Level's authors had produced a shabby, shallow work which threatened to "contaminate" our presumably honest political debate, as if it were an oil slick heading towards a pristine coast. The book that has the Tories running scared
Sadly, that same sort of shabby treatment has been accorded some of the mystery world's most beloved authors.
He walked past her into a tiny, shabby room.
Antique and handmade furniture, including a writing desk and sofa, complete the shabby chic look. Times, Sunday Times
All of the houses were wooden, and most of the people were dressed in shabby clothes.
At the time, it was considered a shabby place to live, because, well, we were a shabby family.
Godwin especially was a running sore both now and later on; the philosopher was at the beginning of that shabby 'degringolade' which was to end in the ruin of his self-respect. Shelley
I stayed with them in their base at Sukhum, a shabby old Soviet hotel with peacocks in the garden.
He reached up, and I felt a sudden keen pain in my left tit as he stuck a pin in it - I gasped and looked down, and there it was, on its ribbon, the shabby-looking little bronze cross against my jacket; at first I didn't even recognise it, and then Lady Canning was leading the clapping, and Campbell was pumping my right hand and staring at me with his brows down. Fiancée
Sadness filled Jason's eyes and he stood there looking at Trevor with his shabby clothes and worn shoes.
A small shabby man was trotting beside Bardi trying to get his attention.
When there was any riot in the streets, I fled, and scougged myself at the chimley-lug as quickly as I dowed; and, rather than double a nieve to a schoolfellow, I pocketed many shabby epithets, got my paiks, and took the coucher's blow from laddies that could hardly reach up to my waistband. The Life of Mansie Wauch Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself
It should not look like some shabby impromptu of gangsterish thuggery. Rites and Wrongs: James Wolcott
Her home is a rented one-bedroom flat in a shabby part of town.
Off we went through shabby lanes of light industrial shops in cold concrete with steel shutters. The Tribes Triumphant
They were mostly short, hangdog-cheerful men in shabby suits. Interlude – Cafe Nekropolis « Unknowing
Shabby squeak-toys and the headless action figures of a thousand neglectful tots rose from the unkempt lawns.
The building is shabby and there is no money for anything save for emergencies. Times, Sunday Times

How To Use Shabby In A Sentence

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