seamy

It’s huge, brazen and entangled with the seamy politics of migration and assimilation.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 5, 2025

Working with cinematographer Robby Müller, Friedkin puts a Los Angeles on screen that is equal parts glamorous and seamy, where even the palm tree in the movie’s logo looks like a gunshot wound.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2023

The book offers a powerful glimpse into the seamy side of 1970s rock 'n' roll, a time capsule-like rendering of a bygone age.

From Salon ● May 7, 2022

The best way to approach any von Sternberg film is to look, first, to the surfaces — ornate, seamy or otherwise.

From New York Times ● Nov. 5, 2020

Weaving through rush-hour traffic on Turtle's bike, Theo trailed the bus to a seamy downtown district across the railroad tracks where Crow and Otis got off.

From "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin

A former private detective, Hammett grounded his narrative in a corrupt Montana mining town, replacing the cozy murders of traditional whodunits with a seamier view of vice.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 19, 2026

At 69, German had spent 40 years covering the seamier sides of Sin City.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 6, 2022

“Even with Nixon and Reagan, who trafficked in the seamier side of politics, there was some acknowledgement of the need for racial equality.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2020

Actresses keep fleeing the genteel personas the show saddled them with, finding refuge in seamier characters.

From New York Times ● May 19, 2017

My trips were limited, directed, and avoided the seamier side.

From The Huddlers by William Campbell Gault

Those places can harbor the ugliest feelings and seamiest beliefs, yet go undetected if a person speaks and acts otherwise.

From Washington Times ● May 18, 2016

But he imbues even his most marginalized characters with strength, dignity and even wisdom as they boldly navigate the Dream Factory’s seamiest underbelly on their own self-possessed terms.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 15, 2015

By The seamiest affair in Washington this summer, one of the seamiest in many summers, is the aborted appointment of Brett McGurk as ambassador to Iraq—but not for the reason many think.

From Slate ● Jun. 20, 2012

But Season 3 of “The Wire” proved that it was also possible to find suspense and meaning in the seamiest margins of city council meetings and municipal elections.

From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2011

To inquire why the bare mention of the mother of a man's wife should excite merriment is to find oneself instantly deep in sociology—and in some of its seamiest strata too.

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 by Sir Owen Seaman