down-at-the-heel


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down-at-heel

(doun′ət-hēl′) or down-at-the-heel (-ət-thə-)
adj.
1. Worn out from long use or neglect; dilapidated.
2. Shabbily dressed because of poverty; seedy.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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down-at-heel

or down-at-the-heel
adjective
Showing signs of wear and tear or neglect:
Informal: tacky.
Slang: ratty.
Idioms: all the worse for wear, gone to pot, past cure.
The American Heritage® Roget's Thesaurus. Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in classic literature ?
Zeena came into the room with her dragging down-at-the-heel step, and quietly took her accustomed seat between them.
The new look is targeted at moneyed urbanites, with a ramshackle art gallery and the down-at-the-heel "Miami" nightclub now gradually giving way to a hipster burger joint and a bakery serving latte macchiato.
When Nike plunked down $305 million for a slightly down-at-the-heel Converse in 2003, it tasked David Maddocks with getting the brand back in the running.
This is Blue Book #2, one of thirty-six untitled images in "Blue Book," 2009, Dayanita Singh's series of photographs of industrial sites and deserted, down-at-the-heel interiors swaddled in shades of ...
The once down-at-the-heel range has been given a new lease of life - not least with the arrival of the Colt supermini.
But yes, there is an argument for Bradley, and here it is: While Bradley claims to represent a "new politics," the truth is, he sounds more like an old-fashioned Democrat, concerned about those down-at-the-heel constituencies the New Dems abandoned years ago.
At least two pairs of well-fitting, low-heeled work shoes; not worn, misshapen, down-at-the-heel old street or dress footwear.
"In a sense we got the Q-1 by throwing parts away," says Fremont president Paul Rothschild, who with associate Donald Smith and Rona Rothschild (married to Paul) bought Fremont four and a half years ago as a profitable but down-at-the-heel maker of toys, and auto and drainage parts.
Downtown was gilded, bustling, and dignified; Westside was down-at-the-heel. Downtown had the tourists, the businessmen, the churchgoers; Westside had the warehouses and the railroads--and, as decades passed, it had fewer and fewer of those.
Italian theater star Giorgio Albertazzi holds center stage in sweating, battered close-ups as a down-at-the-heel Neapolitan attorney who finds new motivation to practice his profession when he takes on a difficult case of social injustice.
into one of those huge, operatic, down-at-the-heels Peruvian
The coming-of-age tale unfolds on the titular street (a cheery borough designed by Robert Pinta) in an appealingly down-at-the-heels New York City neighborhood, home to both humans and puppets whose resemblance to certain Muppet characters is entirely intentional.