sleaze

Back-formation from sleazy, originally used to describe the thinness and low quality of cloth.

• IPA^(key): /sliːz/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːz

sleaze (countable and uncountable, plural sleazes)

1. (uncountable) Low moral standards.
   • 2004 August 19, London Review of Books:

     ministerial sleaze and mendacity

   • 1988 January 11, The New Yorker:

     The level of sleaze in this city seems to have been rising rapidly in recent years.

2. (informal, countable) A person of low moral standards.
   • 1999, E. Brewer, Picking Up the Marbles, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 162:

     She knew that sleaze Hakido would do something to stick the knife in and twist it to the hilt.

3. (informal, countable) A man who is sexually aggressive or forward with women to the point of causing disgust.
   • 1989, Weekly World News, "My hubby robbed the cradle and left me with the baby", 7 November, p. 42.

     I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that sleaze slept with your boss and I wouldn't take it lying down.

   • 1996, S. Hoskinson Frommer, Buried in Quilts, Harlequin, →ISBN, page 64:

     Mother, he's such a sleaze! The way he looked at you!

4. (informal, uncountable) sleazy material

   a tabloid newspaper full of sleaze

sleaze (third-person singular simple present sleazes, present participle sleazing, simple past and past participle sleazed)

1. To act or progress in a sleazy manner.

   He sleazed his way over to the women at the bar.

2. To slander. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

• leazes