down at heel

comparative more down at heel · superlative most down at heel · alternative down at heels · alternative down at the heel · alternative down at the heels · alternative down in the heel · alternative down in the heels

1. literallyIn poor condition, especially due to having worn heels; worn-out, shabby.

   A pair of Oxford-mixture trousers […] fell in a series of not the most graceful folds over a pair of shoes sufficiently down at heel to display a pair of very soiled white stockings.

   1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 41, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC

2. broadlyidiomaticShabbily dressed, slovenly; impoverished; shabby, dilapidated.

   For the likes of her, the down-at-heels support of Hoboken pier was plenty good enough.

   1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 1

   4 more examples

   He was a queer shoot, again, in his unkempt longish hair and slovenly clothes, a sort of very vulgar down-at-heel American in appearance.

   1916, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “John”, in Twilight in Italy, London: Duckworth and Co. […], →OCLC, pages 211–212

   Last year, he was down at heel, homeless and had an erratic relationship with his family.

   2003, Lynda Lee-Potter, "Sex-crazed fans . . .," Daily Mail (UK), 27 Dec. (retrieved 20 Jan. 2010)

   A down-at-the-heels advertising copywriter when he hit on the idea, he originally meant it as a joke.

   2015 March 31, Margalit Fox, “Gary Dahl, Inventor of the Pet Rock, Dies at 78”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Researchers analysed 500 interviews with people in right-wing strongholds in France and Germany, places such as Gelsenkirchen-Ost, a down-at-heel suburb north-east of Essen blighted with high levels of unemployment and where anti-immigrant party Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) garnered nearly a third of the vote in the 2017 elections […]

   2020, Noreena Hertz, The Lonely Century, Hodder & Stoughton, →ISBN

   Antonyms: well-heeled