dingily

Like Powell, Kynaston is attracted by people who make compromises, accept second-best, live dingily and submit quietly without relinquishing hope.

She had saved him from the second-rate, dingy life he had been so dingily ready to accept.

In a dingily furnished room, sitting on a molting, plush sofa I saw the curious little man to whom I had so taken months ago.

That meant first turning right and running towards the ugliest part of the towpath run instead, a section that takes you dingily under the North Circular and past a bus garage.

But the church that had once seemed so inspiring now struck him as dingily and poorly designed, without any of the mystery which once had made it beautiful.