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Glite Dictionary
Dickensian

Dickensian

7 9.1
Having poor, dirty living conditions like those in old London stories
  • adjective
  • /dɪˈkɛnziən/
  • Literature
: dickensiano
  • The streets were filled with Dickensian figures, struggling to make ends meet in the gritty environment.
  • Dickensian workhouse
  • Dickensian poverty
  • Dickensian setting

And it was, it was the Dickensian version of FU.

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Examples

  • In the play, the protagonist's Dickensian upbringing highlighted the stark social inequalities of the time.

  • Because if we're living in a Dickensian nightmare, go back to the example I mentioned last time.

  • "Law firms have such a lack of understanding of business that the state of their people management is equivalent to Dickensian factory workers."

    Academic text (2000)

  • The rich have never had it so good (except perhaps for Dickensian times).

    Blog text (3)

  • The account books were positively Dickensian, as are much of the government bureaucracies here.

    Blog text (28)

  • The U.S. today has unprecedented economic/class disparities, with a truly Dickensian world of poverty in our midst.

    Blog text (7)

  • The following Monday morning, I entered a woody, shadowy office lit by green lamps and peopled by Dickensian old men.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • Walls and her three siblings lived a bohemian, nomadic, and occasionally Dickensian existence with her parents, Rex and Rose Mary Walls.

    Blog text (10)

  • "The world of The Secret Agent is very Dickensian, especially in the way it uses fog to sum up the condition of England" (218), Corton writes.

    Academic text (2018)

  • The novel vividly depicts Dickensian poverty, showing the harsh living conditions faced by many families.

Synonyms

squalid
vsDickensian
8 7.1

Very dirty and unpleasant because of poverty or neglect

is used to describe literary portrayals of poor social conditions
slummy
vsDickensian
1 7.4

An area with poor, dirty housing that people do not take care of

is used in literature to highlight society-wide poverty and social decay

How Squalid

squalid
8 7.1
Dickensian
  • Literature
7 9.1
comfortable
17 2.9
prosperous
83 4.1

Surface Forms

Dickensian positive

Morphology

Dickensian = Dickens (transparent) = Dickens + ian

Formed regularly from the proper name 'Dickens' with the productive adjective-forming suffix '-ian'; the meaning 'characteristic of Dickens' follows directly.

Etymology

The word Dickensian comes from the name Charles Dickens and the ending -ian, which means 'related to' or 'of', like in Victorian. It describes people, places, or scenes that are like the poor, dirty, and crowded world he wrote about, so it means showing very bad living conditions.