Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. of a person, unpleasant, poss. criminal, generally distasteful.

1933		S. Walker Night Club Era 205: [C]auliflower ears, beggars, sleazy crones, skinny girls who would be out of place in even the cheapest dance hall.
1953		L. Uris Battle Cry (1964) 151: A heavily made-up, sleazy-looking bitch.
1955		E. Hoagland Cat Man 250: Then baby-blue-uniformed ushers with arrogant, I-know-my-way-around expressions—schleazy bastards grafting twenty bucks a day.
1967		Oz 6 3/2: Your two sleazy would-be exposers managed to invent so much other rubbish about us [etc.].
1975		Manchester Guardian Weekly 2 Aug. 20: Her sleazo routines seem half-rehearsed. Her dirty jokes sound almost like last-gasp fill-ins for the cleaner lines she was supposed to deliver but forgot.
1976		Tel. (Brisbane) 3 Aug. 10/3: When I made the mistake of calling them ‘sleazy’ to their faces, their reaction was outrage. ‘Don’t call me a sleaze,’ said Miss Currie.
1977		E. Bunker Animal Factory 39: Make sure sleazy ass Preacher doesn’t run in a couple of bogus tickets.
1986		C. Hiaasen Tourist Season (1987) 247: I kicked his sleazy ass out when I caught him trying to tape-record me.
1998		C. Fleming High Concept 133: I don’t understand why those sleazy bastards like whores so much.
2000		Guardian Rev. 14 Jan. 2: Sleazy private dicks.

2. perverse, sexually or otherwise.

1934		S. Walker City Editor 152: Some of the sleaziest writing anywhere is in American newspapers. Some of the best is there also.
1972		E. Sanders Family 73: Death-trip [satanist] groups that must have provided powerful sleazo inputs into manson.
2002		in J. Bailey Conversations in a Brothel 125: It’s not a sleazy industry. Sleazy people exist, but I am not a sleazy person and this is not a sleazy joint.
2004		M.B. ‘Chopper’ Read Chopper 3 4: Tanya was a sadistic whore and the whole thing was getting quite sleazy.
2012		(con. 1980s) I. Welsh Skagboys 273: Ah’ve goat a belter ah a hard-on n she looks as sexy and sleazy as fuck.

3. of a thing, dirty, run-down, decayed.

1935		N. Algren ‘A Place to Lie Down’ in Texas Stories (1995) 62: The paw seized Mack’s shirt [...] with a yank which ripped the sleazy cloth down to the navel.
1949		R. Chandler Little Sister 82: The sleazy hamburger joints.
1959		J. Thompson Getaway in Four Novels (1983) 96: Old hands in the sleazy bypaths of crime, they could pretty well guess what had happened to her.
1960		C. Himes Big Gold Dream 190: A corner was curtained off for a clothes closet by a sleazy curtain.
1963		‘Geoffrey Tolhurst’ Flat 4 King’s Cross (1966) 98: Inside the sleazy, untidy room a man was sitting in an armchair, without a collar on, reading the racing results.
1963		M. Spillane Return of the Hood 42: They were glad to pinpoint him at a sleezy gin mill that featured a belly dancer.
1978		R. Caron Go-Boy! 62: I was still living in a cheap rooming house in a sleazy district.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 15: [I was] putting the arm on some counter-culture bimbo for her sleazy bus. [Ibid.] 158: He’s got this hotel and bar that he owns. Really a sleazo racket.
2000		Observer Screen 9 Jan. 11: An innocent country boy moves into a sleazy hotel near Time Square.
2010		K. Richards Life 166: You were really in one of the sleaziest businesses there is, without actuallty being a gangster.

4. (US juv.) lucky.

1987

G.A. Fine With the Boys 169: Sleezy, adj. Lucky, often with the implication that the luck was undeserved (as in ‘sleezy catch’).