skeezy

US, 1992. Variant of sleazy, possibly influenced by sketchy (“dubious, unnerving”); alternatively analyzed as blend of sketchy +‎ sleazy.

• IPA^(key): /ˈskiːzi/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːzi

skeezy (comparative skeezier or more skeezy, superlative skeeziest or most skeezy)

1. (slang) Despicable, tasteless.
   • 2024 March 12, J. Edward Moreno, quoting Kathryn D. Coduto, “Dating Apps Have Hit a Wall. Can They Turn Things Around?”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     “It feels really different to pay for access to people,” said Kathryn D. Coduto, a Boston University professor who studies dating apps. “Paying for it makes it feel a little skeezy.”

2. (slang) Sleazy.
   • 2002, Hanne Blank, Unruly Appetites: Erotic Stories, page xiv:

     I jilled while babysitting, having found a cache of skeezy porno mags hidden at the bottom of a big basket of magazines in one family's master bathroom.

   • 2005, Dan Lieberman, Carnegie Mellon University, page 93:

     I went to Rock Jungle twice and it was a disaster. It was filled with skeezy old men with bad cologne and gold chains trying to pick up eighteen-year-old girls.

   • 2014, Alena Smith, Tween Hobo: Off the Rails, page 192:

     The pregnant daughter was yawning a lot and kept trying to lean on her skeezy boyfriend, who was housing a bag of Late Night All-Nighter Cheeseburger Doritos and not really sharing.

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:skeezy.

• skeeze
• skeezer

• The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English, Tom Dalzell, Eric Partridge, 2008, p. 888