shabby: [17] Etymologically, shabby means ‘scabby’. It comes from a now obsolete shab, which denoted ‘scab’, and also metaphorically ‘disreputable fellow’. It was the native equivalent to Old Norse *skabbr ‘scab’, from which English gets scab. => scab
shabby (adj.)
1660s, of persons, "poorly dressed," with -y (2) + shab "a low fellow" (1630s), literally "scab" (now only dialectal in the literal sense, in reference to a disease of sheep), from Old English sceabb (the native form of the Scandinavian word that yielded Modern English scab; also see sh-). Similar formation in Middle Dutch schabbich, German schäbig "shabby."
Of clothes, furniture, etc., "of mean appearance, no longer new or fresh" from 1680s; meaning "inferior in quality" is from 1805. Figurative sense "contemptibly mean" is from 1670s. Related: Shabbily; shabbiness. Shabby-genteel "run-down but trying to keep up appearances, retaining in present shabbiness traces of former gentility," first recorded 1754. Related: Shabaroon "disreputable person," c. 1700.
实用例句
1. It was hard to say why the man deserved such shabby treatment.
真搞不懂为什么这个人就该受到如此不公正的待遇。
来自柯林斯例句
2. Selling their fans short in such a shabby way is not acceptable.
如此过分地怠慢他们的崇拜者令人无法接受。
来自柯林斯例句
3. He walked past her into a tiny, shabby room.
他从她身边经过,走进了一个狭小简陋的房间。
来自柯林斯例句
4. The flat was small but attractive, if rather shabby.