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SORDID
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Meanly avaricious and mercenary
Example:
sordid material interests
Classified under:
Similar:
acquisitive (eager to acquire and possess things especially material possessions or ideas)
Derivation:
sordidness (unworthiness by virtue of lacking higher values)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Foul and run-down and repulsive
Example:
sordid shantytowns
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Similar:
dirty; soiled; unclean (soiled or likely to soil with dirt or grime)
Derivation:
sordidness (sordid dirtiness)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Unethical or dishonest
Example:
shoddy business practices
Synonyms:
dirty; shoddy; sordid
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
corrupt (lacking in integrity)
Derivation:
sordidness (unworthiness by virtue of lacking higher values)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Morally degraded
Example:
the squalid atmosphere of intrigue and betrayal
Synonyms:
seamy; seedy; sleazy; sordid; squalid
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
disreputable (lacking respectability in character or behavior or appearance)
Derivation:
sordidness (unworthiness by virtue of lacking higher values)
Context examples:
And I make free to say that for the time being life assumed the same sordid values to me.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Such sordid things as stabbing affrays were evidently not fit subjects for conversation with a lady.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Behind him lay the narrow cell, clay-floored and damp, comfortless, profitless and sordid.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
When I tread the old ground, I do not wonder that I seem to see and pity, going on before me, an innocent romantic boy, making his imaginative world out of such strange experiences and sordid things!
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
That he had once, by way of experiment, privately removed a heap of these stones from the place where one of his Yahoos had buried it; whereupon the sordid animal, missing his treasure, by his loud lamenting brought the whole herd to the place, there miserably howled, then fell to biting and tearing the rest, began to pine away, would neither eat, nor sleep, nor work, till he ordered a servant privately to convey the stones into the same hole, and hide them as before; which, when his Yahoo had found, he presently recovered his spirits and good humour, but took good care to remove them to a better hiding place, and has ever since been a very serviceable brute.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Amidst this sordid scene, sat a man with his clenched hands resting on his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
It was a cheap and sordid thing after all, this life, and the sooner over the better.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
It banished sordid fact, flooded his mind with beauty, loosed romance and to its heels added wings.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Whatever I had learnt, had so slipped away from me in the sordid cares of my life from day to night, that now, when I was examined about what I knew, I knew nothing, and was put into the lowest form of the school.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I had entreated him to keep quite clear of the house till everything was arranged: and, indeed, the bare idea of the commotion, at once sordid and trivial, going on within its walls sufficed to scare him to estrangement.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
