Dingy means dark, dirty and depressing to be in. A dingy flat, dingy walls, dingy and cramped.
It is about light as much as dirt: a dingy room is one no amount of cleaning would cheer up. It is said with a soft g, like dinghy, and the two are spelled almost alike and mean nothing like each other.
1adjectivedingyDark, dirty and depressing to be in.
“They rented a dingy basement flat with one small window and damp walls.”
dingy is a quality.
From an English dialect word meaning dirty, of uncertain origin.
Old English
*dyncgiġ — covered with dung, dirty
Middle English
*dingy
English, today
dingy
Built from
From English dialectal (Kentish) dingy (“dirty”), of unknown origin, though probably from Middle English dingy, dungy, from Old English dyncgiġ (“covered with dung, dirty”), an umlaut form of duncge, dung (“dung”), equivalent to dung + y, hence a a doublet of dungy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA