It's the Word of the Day podcast for December 4th.
Today's word is frowsy, spelled F-R-O-W-S-Y.
Frowsy is an adjective.
Something described as frowsy has a messy or dirty appearance.
Here's the word used in a sentence from The Guardian.
Footage from his early shows is sublime.
In one, models with frowsy hair taught her along the catwalk in clogs,
clutching, for reasons not explained, dead mackerel.
Despite its meanings suggesting neglect and inattention,
the word frowsy has been kept in steady rotation by English users since the late 1600s.
The word, which is also spelled F-R-O-W-Z-Y,
and has enjoyed other variants over the centuries,
first wafted into the language in an old factory sense,
describing that which smells fusty and musty, an old factory perhaps,
or corrupt air from animal substance, which Benjamin Franklin described as frusy in a 1773 letter.
frowsy later gained an additional sense,
describing the appearance of something or someone disheveled or unkempt.
Charles Dickens was a big fan of this usage, writing frowsy fields and cowhouses in Dombie and Son,
and a frowsy fringe of hair hanging about someone's ears in the old Curiosity Shop.
Both senses are still in use today.