sleaze means low moral standards. It carries an Arena rating of 1344, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, sleaze ranks #719 of 42,747 for Qualifying, #845 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,386 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #2,045 of 17,131 for Scariest Words.
sleaze is pronounced /sliːz/.
Why “sleaze” is a great word
Low moral standards or sordid behavior, especially in a political or public context. It is a back-formation from the adjective 'sleazy', which originally described thin or flimsy cloth of low quality. Unlike 'corruption,' which denotes specific illegal or fraudulent acts, or 'seediness,' which describes a physical squalor, sleaze is the ambient moral grime—the greasy handshake, the whispered offer in a smoke-filled room, the specific tackiness of a privilege paid for in compromised principles. It is the whole sad theater of human exchange when dignity is the cheapest thing in the room, an ethical threadbareness where the weave of principle has worn too thin.
Etymology
Back-formation from sleazy, originally used to describe the thinness and low quality of cloth.
noun
- Low moral standards.e.g.“The level of sleaze in this city seems to have been rising rapidly in recent years.” — 1988 January 11, The New Yorker:
- Political corruption.e.g.“ministerial sleaze and mendacity” — 2004 August 19, London Review of Books:
- A person of low moral standards.e.g.“She knew that sleaze Hakido would do something to stick the knife in and twist it to the hilt.” — 1999, E. Brewer, Picking Up the Marbles, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 162:
- A man who is sexually aggressive or forward with women to the point of causing disgust.
- Sleazy material or publications.e.g.“a tabloid newspaper full of sleaze”
verb
- To act or progress in a sleazy manner.e.g.“He sleazed his way over to the women at the bar.”
- To slander.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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