1560s, "easily crumbled;" 1570s, "like bread," from crumb. The second sense probably accounts for 18c. (and later in dialects) use, of a woman, "attractively plump, full-figured, buxom." Slang meaning "shoddy, filthy, inferior, poorly made" in use by 1859, probably is from
the first sense, but influenced by crumb in its slang sense of "louse."
mod. lousy; bad; inferior. (See comments at crumb.) : You know, this stuff is pretty crummy.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition. Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Example sentences
The mystery is why savers accepted crummy returns over long periods.
It's a crummy situation, and there's no combination of policy proposals or speeches that can get you out of it.
If a worker chooses a company with a crummy retirement plan, that's the way the free market works.
The crummy part of swimming, the author notes, is that while you're doing it you can't really see much.
For the first hour, the crummy book holds back the audience.
People may notice they feel crummy a few hours after eating junk food.
What would be offensive, in their view, would be to write a crummy song.
What a way a crummy way to treat adjunct faculty who have credentials.
Maybe it's good that they're somewhat synchronizing again, but things are still crummy in stocks at the moment.
Unrealism reflects an entire generation's conviction that the world they have inherited is a crummy second-rate duplicate.