sordid means distasteful, ignoble, vile, or contemptible. It carries an Arena rating of 1726, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, sordid ranks #1,714 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,745 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #2,622 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #3,106 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words.
sordid is pronounced /ˈsɔː.dɪd/.
Why “sordid” is a great word
Involving or characterized by ignoble, squalid, or morally degrading actions or conditions. From Latin *sordidus* ("dirty, filthy, mean, base"), from *sordes* ("dirt, filth"). Unlike "ignoble," which suggests a simple absence of honor, or "squalid," which denotes a physical state of grim neglect, "sordid" marries the two, staining the moral with the grime of the material. It is the sticky residue on a barroom floor at last call, the grubby details of a payoff whispered in a parked car, and the cheap perfume trying to mask a room’s deeper decay—the quiet degradation of things and people worn thin by shame, as if filth itself could blush, but doesn’t.
Etymology
From Middle English sordide, from Latin sordidus. Alternatively from French sordide.
adj
- Distasteful, ignoble, vile, or contemptible.
- Dirty or squalid.e.g.“They rented a sordid apartment together.”
- Morally degrading.
- Grasping; stingy; avaricious.
- Of a dull colour.e.g.“Leaves sordid-tomentulose beneath” — 1926, Paul Carpenter Standley, Trees and Shrubs of Mexico: Bignoniaceae-Asteraceae, page 1530:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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