Nor has the breathing-space they afforded been used to clean up all of the shabbier corporate practices.

ECONOMIST: Malaysia

Now the neighborhoods became shabbier, and Con and Jerry seemed more conspicuous.

NEWYORKER: Brooklyn Circle

They will have to live farther away from where they work, send their children to overcrowded schools, and end up in shabbier hospitals.

ECONOMIST: California's economy

Still, she traded in her BMW for a Subaru, says her wardrobe "is much shabbier, " dropped a golf club membership and makes a small fraction of her former salary.

FORBES: Life

Deference is still accorded to them in Poland, where the term intelligentsia carries residual prestige, but their clothes are now shabbier, their collars more frayed than they were a few years ago.

ECONOMIST: Mass distraction in Poland

Infrastructure is getting shabbier.

ECONOMIST: The Berlusconi era will haunt Italy for years to come