Is the sentence below correct?
The place is lousy with hippies
I looked it up on merriam-webster.com but they said that lousy was:
infested with lice
Close, but not quite there...
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5 Answers
Your sentence,
The place is lousy with hippies
means the place is filled with undesirable or unwanted hippies. Here the meaning of being infested with lice is not used. You can look up in Oxford English Dictionary - here.
Therefore the sentence is correct.
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I don't see how your link supports your assertion that 'lousy' can mean 'full of' anything other than lice.– BenjolCommented Feb 14, 2011 at 8:20
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1@Benjol - the quote in the definition says "(lousy with) informal teeming with " - that does not refer to lice– mmmmmmCommented Feb 14, 2011 at 11:55
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@Mark, ok I see. I guess I just skimmed the 1. and 2., and didn't see anything there.– BenjolCommented Feb 14, 2011 at 12:24
The NOAD reports that lousy means also teeming with something regarded as bad or undesirable.
You can understand lousy as metaphorically referring to an infestation.
The town is lousy with tourists.
answered Feb 14, 2011 at 14:38
As others have said, probably the commonest meaning of lousy today is simply bad.
Ugh, the weather here is lousy.
However, the OP’s example is not quite this sense; it’s a figurative usage a bit closer to the original in meaning. Lousy with X is roughly equivalent to swarming with X, or more generally, well-supplied with X. It often implies that X’s are undesirable (as in the OP’s lousy with hippies), but not always:
Amazon is Lousy with Gaming Deals Today —kotaku.com headline
The Random House Mavens’ Word of the Day has a nice little article on the matter.
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Interesting, I've not come across that usage before. Re @Ian's comment on my answer, how would you pronounce this type of lousy? Louzy or Loussy?– BenjolCommented Feb 14, 2011 at 8:24
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@Benjol: I’d always pronounce it with a /z/, whatever sense of the word I’m using. See my comment on your answer too…– PLLCommented Feb 14, 2011 at 18:08
I'm not sure what you think lousy means, but from your example phrase, it doesn't look like you think it means what I think it means!
In general usage, lousy means "of bad quality" or just plain bad.
In fact, I'd say that you'll find it is almost exclusively used with that meaning. If people are referring to something that is infested with lice, they are more likely to say "infested with lice", or "lice-infested", to avoid being misunderstood.
Because if you say, "my lousy son", people are more likely to think you are referring to his bad attitude than his bad hair...
(It's interesting to note that on this Merriam-Webster page, even though the 1st meaning is give as "infested with lice", all of the usage examples relate to the one I suggest above)
Edit, as @Ian points out in his comment below, the ambiguity would be written, because when speaking, one would differentiate between louSSy (with 'louses') and louZy (bad/'naff'). Nevertheless, I can't think of the last time I heard anyone say louSSy. (Re-edit read the comments)
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1I think the word is pronounced with an unvoiced s sound when it means lice-infested, to match louse (the singular of lice), but with a voiced z for the more common meaning. That way it's not ambiguous when you speak, but doesn't help reading. Commented Feb 14, 2011 at 8:15
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@Ian, good point. I wonder if that's the case on both sides of the Atlantic?– BenjolCommented Feb 14, 2011 at 8:16
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2@Ian: are you sure? As I understand, the original sense is also pronounced with a /z/ — or at least, it was when it was in more common use. The OED only lists this pronunciation; also, somewhere in the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Pairie series, a girl named Eliza Jane who’s had headlice gets taunted with “Lazy, lousy, Lizy Jane”, which strongly suggests they used /z/ in the 19th-century Midwest… If lousy gets pronounced with /s/ these days, I’d imagine this is a spelling pronunciation, arising just since the literal sense fell out of common use.– PLLCommented Feb 14, 2011 at 18:07
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@PLL - No, I'm not sure. That was based on a thoroughly nonscientific poll consisting of me and a friend. Thinking about it after the fact I think my reasoning is that lice - louse - lousy should be pronounced to rhyme with mice - mouse - mousy, but honestly I'm not sure I've ever heard the word spoken (and I live in Austin, with no shortage of lousy hippies). Commented Feb 15, 2011 at 0:07
Lousy means generally of poor quality (materially or morally).
It's pronounced "LOW-zee" in the US and UK.
Originally it meant "full of lice", and the implication in calling someone a louse is that they're (metaphorically) a blood-sucking pest. But as noted, it's hardly ever used to actually say that someone has lice. You'd generally say "has lice". As I did.
