Also 7 squalour, 7–8 squallor. [a. L. squālor, f. squālēre to be dry, rough, dirty, etc. So It. squallore, OF. squalleur.]
1. The state or condition of being physically squalid; a combination of misery and dirt.
1621. Burton, Anat. Mel., 207. What can poverty giue els, but beggery, fulsome nastinesse, squalor,… drudgery, labor, vglinesse?
1635. Swan, Spec. M., vii. § 3 (1643), 320. Without light … each parcel of the worlds fabrick [would] lie buried in … dismall squalour.
1650. Bulwer, Anthropomet., 172. The Vice of this denominated Vertue is Squalor.
1714. Mandeville, Fable Bees (1733), I. 361. The dirt and squallor,… his pastimes and recreations would be all abominable.
1858. Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Note-bks., II. 198. Hovel piled upon hovel,—squalor immortalized in undecaying stone.
1877. Black, Green Past., vii. These wretched people living in squalor and ignorance and misery.
b. fig. The quality of being morally squalid.
1860. Emerson, Cond. Life, vi. Worship. In creeds never was such levity; witness the … squalor of Mesmerism, the deliration of rappings.
† 2. Aridity or roughness. Obs.–1
a. 1637. B. Jonson, Discov., Wks. (1641), 116. Let them … no lesse take heed, that their new flowers and sweetnesse doe not as much corrupt, as the others drinesse, and squallor.
