0 (especially of clothes or the person wearing them) not attractive or fashionable: --
1 (esp. of clothes or the person wearing them) unattractive and not stylish, often because of being old-fashioned --
Apple pan dowdy is an apple cobbler whose crust has been broken and perhaps stirred back into the filling.
Apple pan dowdy most commonly features a pie crust, which is broken (dowdied) before serving.
Everyone recognises that many urban sub-post offices are much too dowdy, but the key to improving standards in them will be the increased volume of business that they can expect.
Now the building might be described as a dowdy and dirty edition of its former self, and there is an air around the place that nobody really cares.
We have a great tradition of adult education in this country, but we have to be careful that it does not become a little dowdy and mouldy.
People do not want to walk into a dowdy-looking post office, on which no money has been spent for years.
We can never be great if we have a dowdy educational system.
They exist only in drab, dreary, dowdy streets.