insalubrious
/ˌɪnsəˈluːbrɪəs
/adjective
(Of a place) seedy and run-down; unwholesome: a poor area full of insalubrious hotels...
- I went into this most insalubrious place with little gnome-like people hunched over indescribable pictures, and I asked the man for this Tokyo Rose.
- The conditions they lived in were atrocious: overcrowded lodging houses, cellars, and garrets, shanty towns in the insalubrious districts beyond the town walls.
- Shortly before his death he separated from his second wife and went to live in an insalubrious suburb of Paris.
Synonyms
seedy, unsavoury, sordid, seamy, sleazy, unpleasant, dingy, mean, wretched, dismal;
slummy, slum-like, squalid, shabby, ramshackle, tumbledown, run down, down at heel, dilapidated, neglected, uncared-for, unmaintained, crumbling, decaying, gone to rack and ruin
informal scruffy, scuzzy, crummy, grungy, shambly
British informal grotty
North American informal shacky, skanky
Derivatives
insalubrity
/ noun ...- An argument against this, however, is that following the Civil War the South did experience considerable migration from the North despite its reputation for insalubrity.
- For, as we have seen, the misfortunes of the city were due to the insalubrity of its climate and the collapse of the Portuguese power and commerce in the East.
- It will in all probability become a place of the first consequence, notwithstanding the insalubrity of its climate, and the dreadful tempests it is subject to in winter.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from Latin insalubris (from in- 'not' + salubris 'salubrious') + -ous.