Feeling Dingy

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hello. My name is Morgan. I’m calling from Los Angeles. So my question is, I had a cold recently and I went to text my mom and my sister that I was feeling dingy, which is a word that my mom has always used for that sort of off balance, out of it feeling you get when you’re sick sometimes.

And when I typed it, I started overthinking it like, well, this looks exactly like the word dingy like unclean, which got me thinking, is it spelled dinghy, D-I-N-G-H-I like the boat? And also, why have I never heard anyone else use this word before? So I went and looked online because obviously I love words and I couldn’t find anything. I texted my mom, told her it’s a mystery and I asked where she got it. And she said, I think a lot of folks my age use that to say they feel dizzy and muddleheaded. So I’m really curious about where this came from.

Yeah. Oh, this is such an interesting mystery because it’s, I don’t even know how to break into this, but a couple dictionaries have entries that are close, but not quite the way you’re talking about it.

And I think this might be a shortcoming of the dictionaries. So the Oxford English Dictionary and the Dictionary of American Regional English both have entries where the dinghy, one of the meanings is foolish, silly, crazy, mad, insane.

And I think those are close to what you’re talking about, that woozy, out of it feeling. But they’re not quite right.

But if we go to Internet Archive and search the books there, which I often do when I’m doing language research, you can see people using it in the same way that you and your mom do.

So there’s a football player talking about feeling dingy because of a concussion.

That sounds the same to me.

How interesting.

So I’ve never heard of a word that you can find so many references to its usage, but it’s not actually captured in that definition anywhere.

And I think it’s got some relationship, although it’s really hard to piece out, to dingbat and dingaling and dingdong, which are often all three pejorative, referring to somebody who’s ditzy.

But the ditzyness is this idea of being a little unsettled in the head, being out of sorts or not a clear thinker.

So I think this is the relationship here between dingy, those three terms, and it has nothing at all to do with the boat, the dingy, and nothing at all to do with something being dingy, which means being not clean or pure.

Or being dinged, unless you get a concussion.

Well, I think the being dinged is related to ding-a-ling and ding-dong, because those are about striking a metal.

Oh, well, there you go.

But my question then to you is, we always said it dingy, not dingy, with a hard G.

Right. Yeah, that’s how I’m saying it. It might just be hard on the line to hear it.

Gotcha.

But it’s not dingy, right? When something is dingy, meaning it’s been soiled so that the white is no longer clean.

I think if the dictionary spent some more effort on finding citations on this, they would probably revise their definitions to be more in line with the way you and your mom used the word dingy.

I very much appreciate the background.

I’ll have to share it with her.

Yeah.

Well, thanks so much.

Yeah, take care.

That sounds like you’re feeling better.

I am feeling better.

Thank you so much.

No longer dingy.

No more dingy.

And not dingy either.

Not dingy.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

All right.

Take care.

Bye.

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