seedy

Meanings

1. Literal senses:
2. Containing or full of seeds.
3. Seedlike; having the flavour of seeds.
4. Having a peculiar flavour supposed to be derived from the weeds growing among the vines; said of certain kinds of French brandy.
5. Inferior in condition or quality.
6. Shabby, run-down, possibly connected with bad, dishonest or illegal activities, somewhat disreputable.
7. Untidy, unkempt.
8. Infirm, unwell, gone to seed.
9. Suffering the effects of a hangover.

Etymology

From Middle English sedy, equivalent to seed + -y. The senses with negative connotation, first attested by 1725 in slang, originally especially “poor, out of money”, probably arose from the metaphor of a flower that has gone to seed, and is no longer considered beautiful. From there the word came to be used to describe unwell or past-their-prime people, and parallelly run-down places and by extension low-income or crime-affected urban areas. Compare the figurative expressions go to seed (by 1817), etc., originally in reference to plants, “cease flowering as seeds develop”.