WordWeb Online

1. Lacking in smartness or taste
   "a dowdy grey outfit"; "a clean and sunny but completely dowdy room"
    
2. Primly out of date
   "nothing so dowdy as last year's gambling game";
   - frumpy, frumpish

1. Deep-dish apple dessert covered with a rich crust
   - pandowdy

1. British marshal of the RAF who commanded the British air defence forces that defeated the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain (1882-1970)
   - Dowding, Hugh Dowding, Baron Hugh Caswall Tremenheere Dowding

Derived forms: dowdier, dowdies, dowdiest

See also: daggy [Austral, NZ, informal], styleless, unfashionable, unstylish

Type of: full general, general, marshal, marshall, pastry

Encyclopedia: Dowdy, John