What it means
Dodgy, suspect, the kind of thing that makes the hair on your neck stand up. A sketchy alley, a sketchy link in your inbox, a sketchy bloke loitering by the cash machine. It covers anything that feels unsafe or untrustworthy, plus shaky quality, like a sketchy phone signal that drops every other word.
Usage examples
"That email asking for my bank details looked dead sketchy, so I binned it and changed my password anyway."
"We took a shortcut down a sketchy side street and walked a lot faster than usual."
"The hostel reviews were sketchy at best, so we paid a bit more and slept somewhere we could actually trust."
Where it comes from
Grew out of sketch, the rough unfinished drawing, so something sketchy is only half drawn in, vague, incomplete, missing the detail you need to trust it. From an unfinished picture it slid into anything that looks dubious or unsafe, never quite filled in enough to feel right.
Other ways to say it
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