Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US) a contemptible person, esp. a criminal.

1913		J. London Valley of the Moon (1914) 76: It’s the low-lifers in the audience that gets me. [...] booze-guzzlin’ stiffs that ’d be afraid to mix it with a sick cat.
1914		M. Glass Potash and Perlmutter 2: I got better judgment as to let a lowlife like him get into me.
1921		N. Putnam West Broadway 196: ‘The genuine Egyptian gypsies [...] thought the rest of us was lowlifes and who wouldn’t stoop so low as to associate with mere Christians’.
1922		Colton & Randolph Rain II 145: That’s what I think of you, coming to me with all that guff you spilled about salvation—then going and having me deported on top of it—you low lived.
1938		W. Winchell On Broadway 25 Mar. [synd. col.] WJZ – for the best lowdown on foreign lowlifes.
1939		Howsley Argot: Dict. of Und. Sl. 31: low lifer – a worthless, low person (Jewish).
1959		B. Kops Hamlet of Stepney Green II.ii: I put up with a lot to stop him being a low-life.
1960		N. Hilliard Maori Girl 176: That’s where all the low-lifers hang out.
1963		A. Baron Lowlife (2001) 8: Why should the Almighty care about you? A lowlife like you?
1977		A. Brooke Last Toke 65: Pecker [...] knew every low-life in the city, black or white.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 151: Maybe he was the patron saint of lowlifers.
1987		T. Wolfe Bonfire of the Vanities 199: Stood up to some lowlife, and the fucking guy shot him right in the mouth.
1989		R.G. Barratt ‘Tall Poppies Deserve Short Shrift’ in What Do You Reckon (1997) [ebook] Even a lowlife like me gets it occasionally to some degree, mainly from dopey sheilas.
1998		P. Doyle (con. late 1950s) Amaze Your Friends (2019) 155: The Christians trolled for converts among the lowlifes.
1999		Guardian Guide 17–23 July 98: I may be a criminal and a thief, but I ain’t a low-life.
2006		C. Hiaasen Nature Girl 207: Her tolerance of cretins, liars and lowlifes had dwindled to zero.
2010		K. Richards Life 122: Brian was very class conscious, you see: ‘Bill Perks,’ to him, was some lowlife.
2012		L. Redhead ‘Grassed’ in Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] Which one of you diseased low lives left a used needle for my daughter to pick up?
2017		D. Winslow The Force [ebook] Malone can’t have lowlifes like Teddy Bailey telling him he’s protected.
2018		‘Aidan Truhen’ Price You Pay 86: The clientele here decides I am a lowlife, one fractional gradation closer to criminality than they are.
2021		C. Hammer Opal Country 247: ‘[T]he low-life who shit in their own nest just to advance their own careers’.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 289: Country club caddies are lowlifes [...] career boozehounds, hopheads.