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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
frumpy
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a frumpy housewife
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ All the frumpy people in their starchy clothes.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
frumpy

1746, "cross-tempered," probably from the frumps (n.) "bad temper" (1660s) and an earlier verb meaning "to mock, browbeat" (1550s), of obscure origin, perhaps imitative of a sneer or derisive snort. See also frump. Sense of "sour-looking, unfashionable" is from 1825, but this may be a shortening of frumple "to wrinkle, crumple" (late 14c.), from Middle Dutch verrompelen "to wrinkle," from ver- "completely" + rompelen "to rumple." Related: Frumpily; frumpiness.

Wiktionary
frumpy

a. 1 dowdy, unkempt, or unfashionable. 2 (context dated English) ill-tempered or bad-tempered.

WordNet
frumpy

adj. primly out of date; "nothing so frumpish as last year's gambling game" [syn: dowdy, frumpish]

Wikipedia
Frumpy

Frumpy was a German progressive rock/ krautrock band based in Hamburg, which was active between 1970–1972 and 1990–1995. Formed after the break-up of folk rockers The City Preachers, Frumpy released four albums between 1970–1973 and achieved considerable commercial success. The German press hailed them as the best German rock band of their time and their vocalist as the "greatest individual vocal talent" of the contemporary German rock scene. They disbanded in 1972 although the various members all worked together at various times over the following two decades and they reunited again in 1989, producing three more albums over five years after which they disbanded once more.

Usage examples of "frumpy".

Seven years ago, she had been a frumpy mother with flyaway hair, hiding her stomach under loose sweaters and, tired of being humiliated at the gym, trying to shape up by drinking carrot juice.

Right from the start she had good ideas about how to add a little row of sequins here or a little piece of satin there to make a frumpy dress or suit look glamorous on stage.

The pathetic men, the frumpy women, the filthy childreneven some pointless girls.

Molinari was standing with a bespectacled little gray-haired man wrapped in a frumpy blue sweater.

Colleagues, who she was convinced had been wholly enculturated by outside influences, teased that her frumpy clothing and sensible shoes harkened to previous centuries.

When he handed the tickets to the frumpy old doorwoman who collected them, he gave her also a note he had written and asked her to see that Gospodín Marchan got it before the show was over.

Her frumpy low-heel shoes completed the sort of ensemble in which Switzerland's wealthy immigrants dress their domestic servants.

Back on government levels those were considered slightly daring, at the edge of permissible dress codes for office work, but comparing herself now with the Ligon cousins, Magrit felt frumpy, dumpy, and unkempt.

A skinny little woman as frumpy as Elsie McMay paused to put on a scarf and button her coat, said something over her shoulder, and then marched down the sidewalk.

She looked like somebody's maiden aunt come up out of the grave, I mean as frumpy as a Cow.