squalid

Learned borrowing from Latin squālidus, from squālēre (“to be rough or dirty”).^[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈskwɒlɪd/
• Rhymes: -ɒlɪd

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

squalid (comparative squalider, superlative squalidest)

1. Extremely dirty and unpleasant.
   • 1686, The Refin'd Courtier, or a Correction of several indecencies crept into civil conversation., London: Matthew Gilliflower:

     [...] Mythologists describe Pan the son of Mercury (who was the God of Speech) with the upper part like a man, and the lower like a beast, to signifie that Truth is fair and comely, but a Lye squalid and Deformed.

2. Showing or characterized by a contemptible lack of moral standards.

   a squalid attempt to buy votes

   • 1980 March 3, Antony Jay, Jonathan Lynn, “The Official Visit”, in Yes, Minister, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne):

     Minister, I hardly think that we can exploit our Sovereign by involving her in some might call a squalid vote-grubbing exercise.

   • 2004, Imre Kertész, translated by Tim Wilkinson, Kaddish for an Unborn Child […], New York, N.Y.: Vintage International, →ISBN, page 39:

     [A] demon is just what we’ve been needing for a long, long time for our squalid affairs, to gratify our squalid desires, the sort of demon, of course, who can be persuaded to believe that he is the demon who will take all our own demoniacality on his shoulders, an Antichrist bearing the Iron Cross, and will not insolently slip through our fingers to string himself up before time, as [Nikolai] Stavrogin did.

From taxonomic name Squalidae.

squalid (plural squalids)

1. (zoology) Any member of the family Squalidae of dogfish sharks.
   • 2008, David A. Ebert, James A. Sulikowski, Biology of Skates, page 126:

     Numerous diet studies on squalids have shown that members of this family tend to feed mainly on teleosts and cephalopods […]