squalid

CEFRC2

/ˈskwɒlɪd/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
adjective
Very dirty and unpleasant, especially because of poor living conditions.
02
adjective
Extra detail
Any member of the family Squalidae of dogfish sharks.

Examples

At a glance

Sits at C2 on the CEFR scale

Deep Dive

Extra meanings

In context

a squalid attempt to buy votes
Minister, I hardly think that we can exploit our Sovereign by involving her in some might call a squalid vote-grubbing exercise.
[...] Mythologists describe Pan the son of Mercury (who was the God of Speech) with the upper part like a man, and the lower like a beast, to signifie that Truth is fair and comely, but a Lye squalid and Deformed.

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

The word in print, with each source given in full.

[...] Mythologists describe Pan the son of Mercury (who was the God of Speech) with the upper part like a man, and the lower like a beast, to signifie that Truth is fair and comely, but a Lye squalid and Deformed.
1686, The Refin'd Courtier, or a Correction of several indecencies crept into civil conversation., London: Matthew Gilliflower
Minister, I hardly think that we can exploit our Sovereign by involving her in some might call a squalid vote-grubbing exercise.
1980 March 3, Antony Jay, Jonathan Lynn, “The Official Visit”, in Yes, Minister, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne)
[A] demon is just what we’ve been needing for a long, long time for our squalid affairs, to gratify our squalid desires, the sort of demon, of course, who can be persuaded to believe that he is the demon who will take all our own demoniacality on his shoulders, an Antichrist bearing the Iron Cross, and will not insolently slip through our fingers to string himself up before time, as [Nikolai] Stavrogin did.
2004, Imre Kertész, translated by Tim Wilkinson, Kaddish for an Unborn Child […], New York, N.Y.: Vintage International, →ISBN, page 39
Numerous diet studies on squalids have shown that members of this family tend to feed mainly on teleosts and cephalopods[…]
2008, David A. Ebert, James A. Sulikowski, Biology of Skates, page 126

Looking a word up is the easy part. LexUp remembers which words you have met and brings them back at the point you were about to forget them.

Learned borrowing from Latin squālidus, from squālēre (“to be rough or dirty”).