dirty
/ˈdəːti
/adjective (dirtier, dirtiest)
1Covered or marked with an unclean substance: a tray of dirty cups and saucers her boots were dirty...
- I just had a bath to relax and because I was filthy dirty… covered in paint and wallpaper paste, and feet black with newsprint off the newspapers I'd put on the floor.
- The toilet bowls were unclean and the floor was wet and dirty, and covered in rubbish.
- It was wrinkled almost beyond repair and, because he hadn't taken off his shoes, covered in dirty footprints.
Synonyms
soiled, grimy, grubby, filthy, mucky, stained, unwashed, greasy, smeared, smeary, spotted, smudged, cloudy, muddy, dusty, sooty;
unclean, sullied, impure, tarnished, polluted, contaminated, defiled, foul, unhygienic, insanitary, unsanitary
informal cruddy, yucky, icky
British informal manky, gungy, grotty
Northern Irish informal bogging
literary befouled, besmirched, begrimed
rare feculent
1.1Causing a person or place to become unclean: farming is a hard, dirty job...
- ‘My father was a steel worker all his life, in a filthy, dirty, dangerous job,’ he says.
- If you had a dirty job and your hands were filthy and the call came to roll eggs, there was little opportunity to wash your hands.
- The feeling of compassion was actually based on the idea we were leading much happier and superior lives than they were able to and that we looked down upon the dirty and hard jobs they performed.
1.2(Of a nuclear weapon) producing considerable radioactive fallout.He says that Blair tried to persuade him the Middle East and the whole world were under threat from Iraq's supposed long-range weapons carrying dirty warheads.
2(Of an activity) dishonest; dishonourable: he had a reputation for dirty dealing...
- Greenpeace has a good info page about the environmental impact ship-breaking - as one would imagine, this is a dangerous, dirty activity.
- They like things like slimey frogs, dirty activities, sticks and stones, and throwing those sticks and stones at other people and things.
- However, they've rarely turned their eye on themselves to assess just what sort of dirty dealing may be going on in-house.
Synonyms
unfair, dishonest, deceitful, unscrupulous, dishonourable, unsporting, ungentlemanly, below the belt, unethical, unprincipled, immoral;
crooked, illegal, fraudulent;
rotten, corrupt, double-dealing, Janus-faced, treacherous, underhand, sly, crafty, cunning, wily, devious, Machiavellian, sneaky, guileful, conniving, designing, calculating;
nasty, unpleasant, mean, base, low, vile, contemptible, despicable, cowardly, shameful, ignominious, sordid, beggarly, squalid
informal low-down
British informal out of order, not cricket
2.1US informal Using illegal drugs.
2.2 [attributive] informal Used to emphasize one’s disgust for someone or something: you dirty rat!...
- I mean, he is a dirty rat, he is a key enemy figure that has to be taken down, but there's other insurgent organizations involved.
- Of all the dirty, rotten, disgusting things you've done, this has to be one of the lowest.
- Whatever the provocation, I have to say that it is a pretty low-down dirty thing to rat on someone for surfing-at-work to their employer.
3Concerned with sex in a lewd or obscene way: he told a stream of dirty jokes...
- I mean, they tell all sorts of dirty jokes and discuss lewd things in language I hate to admit I get to listen to all around me, but let someone act like a human being and everyone freaks.
- He tells dirty joke after dirty joke and makes a lot of sexual references in every conversation.
- The joke about your boyfriend was downright dirty and obscene.
Synonyms
indecent, obscene, rude, vulgar, smutty, coarse, crude, filthy, bawdy, suggestive, ribald, racy, salacious, risqué, prurient, offensive, lewd, lascivious, licentious, pornographic, explicit, X-rated;
North American off colour
informal naughty, blue
euphemistic adult
4(Of weather) rough, stormy, and unpleasant.Where is the obligatory miasma of old industry and dirty weather, you wonder; the thunderheads stripped of silver linings?...
- I've never seen such vicious, dirty weather give up so easily.
- Yes - to compound our sickness we picked some dirty weather.
Synonyms
unpleasant, nasty, foul, inclement, rough, bad;
stormy, squally, gusty, windy, blowy, rainy;
misty, gloomy, murky, overcast, louring
5(Of a colour) not bright or pure; dull: the sea was a waste of dirty grey...
- I drop my head, allowing my eyes to wash over the dirty colour of the floorboards.
- The carpet is a dirty beige - my shoes (too small… children's shoes) are muddy, and the laces trail behind my feet.
- The floor was old and dirty beige carpet, and the walls were painted off white but where chipped and peeling.
Synonyms
dull, cloudy, muddy, dingy, dark, not clear, not pure, not bright
5.1(Of popular music) having a distorted or rasping tone: Nirvana’s dirty guitar sound...
- He tends to favor cut-up dirty 70s funk guitar samples that he uses mostly to punctuate his chunky beats.
- LCD Soundsystem is first and foremost, a dance-rock party album full of dirty sounds and nasty grooves.
- Really, a great disc for anyone who loves deep down, sometimes dirty music.
adverb [as submodifier] British informal
Used for emphasis: a dirty great slab of stone...
- The zones earmarked for growth are poised like three swords of Damocles around London's periphery, each one centred on its own source of sustenance: a dirty great road.
- They are the liars-in-chief, the gatekeepers of vaults of dirty big secrets which wait for the deployment of journalistic diligence and courage to be uncovered.
- Because there's no dirty great ball and chain to drag around, The Monsters get to punch home the point time after time without needing to worry if their hair looks good, or how they fit in.
verb (dirties, dirtying, dirtied) [with object]
Make dirty: she didn’t like him dirtying her nice clean towels...
- She accuses them of spoiling the sofa and dirtying the linen.
- Pillars turning into arches kept the roof from falling on those who passed through the halls and the floor that once upon a time was solid now a muddy slush dirties everything it touches.
- When baby dirties herself, clean her up right away.
Synonyms
soil, stain, muddy, blacken, mess up, spoil, tarnish, taint, make dirty;
mark, spatter, bespatter, smudge, smear, daub, spot, splash, splatter;
sully, pollute, foul, defile
literary befoul, besmirch, begrime
Phrases
the dirty end of the stick
do the dirty on someone
get one's hands dirty (or dirty one's hands)
play dirty
talk dirty
Derivatives
dirtily
/ adverb ...- Sure, Cavendish can shake and shimmy with the best of them and growl as dirtily as West as she delivers lines like ‘I used to be Snow White - but I drifted.’
- But as anyone who has had to deal with them knows, the Liberals' squeaky clean image is quite wrong: they fight viciously and dirtily.
- And yes, ok, that could be taken really dirtily…
dirtiness
/ noun ...- I didn't understand what had to be clean-my feet felt fine and I couldn't smell anything to suggest dirtiness, but I suppose the Lady is very picky and wanted the stalls to be super clean.
- The failure of dirt availability or habitat selection to explain the timing of male dirtiness suggests that males delay dirtying their plumage to obtain some benefit from conspicuous plumage.
- I thought that untidiness and dirtiness were the characteristics of cities in some underdeveloped country of the past, like Calcutta, Bombay, Rio de Janeiro or elsewhere, but not here in Australia.