Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. mean, contemptible, unpleasant.

1865		Nation I 586: His manners and conversation, showed him to be a good deal above that class commonly called ‘low-down, trifflin’ people,’ or poor white trash [DA].
1887		M. Roberts Western Avernus (1924) 158: Railroading is considered [...] a ‘low-down job,’ nearly as bad as the dog’s meat man.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 5 July 18/1: When he came past the crowds at Gladesville and Cabarita on Monday he got a liberal hooting. It was a low-down thing for the crowd to do.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 6 Mar. 8/3: That it should have been Ivy Lawson charged with such a dirty low-down trick [...] is a bit of a knock-over.
1905		G.W. Peck Peck’s Bad Boy Abroad 454: When you play some lowdown trick on me, while I seem mad at the time, it does me good, starts the circulation.
1908		N.Z. Truth 22 Feb. 6/1: [headline] A Dirty, Low-down Brothel.
1914		C. Holme Lonely Plough (1931) 124: Rotter! Low-down rotter!
1916		Day Book (Chicago) 21 July 21/2: I ain’t gwine to let no low-down white trash call me dat.
1922		B. Hecht A Thousand and One Afternoons [ebook] I sold myself to her as the world's greatest, all around, low down, hideous liar that ever walked in shoe leather.
1923		‘Sapper’ Jim Maitland (1953) 89: The fellow is just a low-down swine and bully.
1931		Blanche Calloway ‘Misery’ 🎵 You’d cry too, if you knew, / Just how mean and lowdown a man can be.
1941		K. Tennant Battlers 26: You low-down offal! Why, for two pins I’d knock you so cold, you’d fink you was the North Pole.
1948		‘Digg Mee’ ‘Observation Post’ in N.Y. Age 12 Oct. 10/6: I think it’s a low down shame...to see a woman make love to a dame.
1959		J. Thompson Getaway in Four Novels (1983) 55: He knew the name was Lowdown with a capital L.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 65: Mixin wif low down niggah pimps en big cahs.
1971		D. Goines Dopefiend (1991) 105: You done took everything else out of the house to sell, you lowdown bastard.
1980		M. Thelwell Harder They Come 226: ’Im is a no-good low-down rascal man.
1999		Patrick McCabe Mondo Desperado 16: But for every silver fox, lounge lizard and lowdown jazz rat in town.
2002		D.H. Sterry Chicken (2003) 81: Cattle rustlers and low-down no-account murderous thieves and such.
2008		A. Wheatle Dirty South 69: He was a low-down bum [...] He never gave my cousin a penny.

2. depressed, impoverished, out of luck.

c.1895		‘O. Henry’ ‘Aristocracy Versus Hash’ in Rolling Stones (1913) 201: I want a scrubby, ornery, low-down, snuff-dipping, back-woodsy, piebald gang.
1906		Marvel 10 Mar. 169: Why didn’t you start life as an owner of gee-gees, instead of as a low-down jockey?
1926		Odum & Johnson Negro Workaday Songs 103: Lawd, I hate to see you go, / Make me feel so low down.
1935		Sydney Horler London’s Und. 178: Low-down bookmakers are the most ready buyers of ‘snide’, as the product of the present-day coiners is known in the Underworld.
a.1948		(con. early 1930s) C. McKay Harlem Glory (1990) 24: The Cong Vif. That place where all those lowdown Senegalese go. [...] I took you there slumming.
1951		M. Spillane Long Wait (1954) 93: The houses don’t get anything but the low-down stuff.
1966		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 128: It’s a lowdown [shame] how some of you cocksuckin’ lames / you all claim to be so hip.
2000		(con. 1940s–60s) Décharné Straight from the Fridge Dad.

3. of a place, run-down.

1928

C. McKay Home to Harlem 5: He liquored himself up and hung round a low-down café.

4. (US black) excellent.

1926		Odum & Johnson Negro Workaday Songs 146: For some folksies say / A yaller is low down, / But teasin’ brown / Is what I’s crazy about.
1928		Richard M. Jones [song title] It’s the Low-Down Thing.
1939		P.E. Miller Down Beat’s Yearbook of Swing n.p.: dirty and lowdown: pertaining to swing music played in a powerful, primitive style.
1958		Hughes & Bontemps Book of Negro Folklore 418: Ah’m a natu’al bo’n cook / An’ dat ain’t no lie, / An can fry po’k chops / An’ bake a low-down pie.
1962		S. Longstreet Flesh Peddlers (1964) 112: You know I’ve never been to a real low-down name party like this.
1971		F.J. Hodges ‘Syncopating Rhythm’ in Black Wisdom 20: Send me some flatted fifths and measures wild, / The plain low-down blues for this dark child.
2010		A. Steinberg Running the Books 307: A real pimp always keeps it low down and down low.