Frumpling

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A little person who is dowdy, dull in dress, and unfashionable in appearance
2. Someone small and drab whose clothes and manner seem old-fashioned and unappealing
3. A diminutive, shabbily dressed individual who lacks any sense of style or charm

Etymology: The word "frumpling" is a noun formed from "frump," a word for a dowdy, dull-dressed person, and the suffix "-ling," which often marks a small or diminutive thing, as in "duckling" or "gosling." Its ancestry runs back to the verb "frumple," which in Middle English meant to wrinkle or crease, as in crumpled cloth. The same idea appears in Dutch, where "frommelen" means to wrinkle, so the two languages seem to share a common stock of words for rumpled, creased material. The notion of a wrinkled, badly kept garment carried over into a description of a person. A "frumpil" or "frumpylle" in Middle English was a crumpled or puckered thing, and "frump" grew from that sense into a label for someone whose clothes look rumpled, out of date, and unlovely. "Frumpling" then gives that dowdy character a diminutive, small-person form, making it a slightly affectionate or belittling way to describe someone who seems perpetually dressed in yesterday's crumpled fashion.

Synonyms: frump