Advertisement - Continue reading below

Definition of "dumpy" [dump•y]

  • Short and stout; squat. (adjective)
  • Resembling a dump, as in shabbiness; disreputable: "The place had a dark and dumpy look” ( Washington Post). (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "dumpy" in a sentence
  • "This kind of thing was imitated all over Southern California on half-million dollar homes in dumpy neighborhoods with nobody being caught because the losses from fraud were too spread out for anybody to bother burning any shoe leather to check them out."
  • "Also they are really gouged for rent by other less recent immigrants and they are forced to live in dumpy overcrowded apts: the landlords tell them it is against the law to have so many people in a 2 bedroom apt, BUT if they pay more, it is OK."
  • "At daybreak yesterday we were steaming up a branch of the great Me-kong river in Cochin China, a muddy stream, densely fringed by the nipah palm, whose dark green fronds, ten and twelve feet long, look as if they grew out of the ground, so dumpy is its stem."