Lousy

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˈlaʊ.zi/

Definitions

1. Having a very low or bad quality ; covered with or affected by lice
2. Describing something that is unpleasantly bad or inadequate ; being infested with tiny parasitic insects
3. Referring to anything that is substandard, unpleasant, or disappointing ; characterized by the presence of lice or similar creatures

Etymology: The most striking thing about "lousy" is how literal it once was. Its ancestor was a plain description of a body: in Middle English, "lousy" meant infested with lice, and the insect itself, "louse," traces back to Old English "lūs." The word is simply "louse" plus the suffix "-y," meaning "full of" or "having the qualities of," so the earliest sense describes a person or animal crawling with parasites. The figurative sense grew out of that unpleasant image. Once something was loathsome enough to be compared with a louse-ridden body, "lousy" could describe anything disgusting or contemptible, and from there it widened to the everyday modern meaning of substandard or disappointing. The shift from a medical or physical description to a casual insult happened gradually, with no single inventor or famous moment behind it.

Synonyms: awful, terrible, poor, bad, subpar