Aspiring to apparently absent respectability

Usage examples of shabby-genteel.

There were several groupings of squashy couches and armchairs in a variety of patterns that somehow harmonized, numerous Persian rugs, and in general a shabby-genteel English country house look and feel that communicated both money and a carelessness about money that only the very rich could afford.

Raimberge’s was at the opposite end of the corridor, with a chestful of trousseau, a spinning wheel, and whatever else pertained to a young girl of shabby-genteel birth.

He thought he would particularly like his illustrator to render the Dickensy, cockneyish quality of the, shabby-genteel balladseller of whom he stopped to ask his way to the street where Lindau lived, and whom he instantly perceived to be, with his stock in trade, the sufficient object of an entire study by himself.

O'Shaughnessy, a general practitioner of some reputation in Hammond, who has his office in his home in the shabby-genteel neighborhood of Franklin Square.