Dodgy

How to spell dodgy

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dodgy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dodgy mean?

1. adjectiveDishonest, suspect, or not to be trusted.
2. adjectiveUnreliable, faulty, or likely to fail or cause trouble.

Dodgy in a sentence

• The salesman gave a dodgy explanation for the missing receipts.

• The laptop kept crashing because of a dodgy power connection.

• She refused to sign the contract because the terms looked dodgy.

• He avoided the stairs all week thanks to a dodgy knee.

Where does dodgy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is an informal British coinage built on the verb 'dodge', which appeared in the mid 1500s meaning to move quickly to one side, to shift about, or to evade something cunningly. The origin of 'dodge' itself is genuinely uncertain; lexicographers cannot tie it to a clear earlier root, though it may be related to dialect words for jogging or shifting position. By adding the common adjective ending '-y', meaning 'full of' or 'inclined to', English speakers turned the idea of evasive shiftiness into a description of anything that seems untrustworthy, suspect, or likely to go wrong. 'Dodgy' in this modern sense became widespread in the 1900s, especially in British and Australian usage, and the spelling keeps the silent-looking 'dg' cluster of 'dodge' rather than a plain 'j'. That 'dg' is the small spelling trap: the word sounds like it could end in '-jy', but the verb root preserves 'dge'.

How the word is built

• dodge (to evade or shift evasively)
• -y (adjective suffix meaning 'characterised by')