Dodgy means not to be trusted, or in poor condition. A dodgy deal, a dodgy knee, looks dodgy.
It is British and it covers an enormous range with one word: dishonest of a person, unreliable of a machine, unsound of a knee, and suspect of food. The understatement is the charm — calling a scheme dodgy says quite a lot while sounding mild. Note dodge, from which it comes.
1adjectivetrustedNot to be trusted.
“He bought a dodgy watch from a man in the pub, and it stopped the next day.”
2adjectivedodgyIn poor or unreliable condition.
“The car's brakes are a bit dodgy, so I'm taking it to the garage.”
dodgy is a quality of unreliability.
Dodge plus -y, from the mid nineteenth century. The origin of dodge itself is unknown.
Proto-Germanic
*dud- — to move
Middle English
*dodden
English
dodge
English, today
dodgy
Built from
From dodge + -y. First used in mid-19th century England. dodge Likely from dialectal dodge, dod, dodd (“to jog, trudge along, totter", also "to jerk, jig”), of unknown origin. Perhaps from unrecorded Middle English dodden, ultimately from Proto-Germanic dud- (“to move”), related to Old English dydrian, dyderian (“to delude, deceive”), Middle English dideren (“to tremble, quake, shiver”), English dodder, Norwegian dudra (“to tremble”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA