down-and-dirty

American  

[doun-uhn-dur-tee] / ˈdaʊn ənˈdɜr ti /

adjective

Informal.

1. unscrupulous; nasty.

   a down-and-dirty election campaign.

2. earthy; funky.

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down and dirty British  

adjective

1. ruthlessly competitive or underhand

   if Bush gets down and dirty the Governor will give as good as he gets

2. uninhibited; frank

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down and dirty Idioms  

1. Vicious, not governed by rules of decency, as in The candidates are getting down and dirty early in the campaign . [ Slang ; early 1980s]

2. Very earthy, uninhibitedly sexual. For example, “L.A. club people rarely get down and dirty on a dance floor” ( The New Yorker , May 21, 1990). [Late 1980s]

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Etymology

Origin of down-and-dirty

First recorded in 1985–90

Example Sentences

The thriller “Monkey Man” opens on a tender scene and a nod to the power of storytelling, only to quickly get down to down-and-dirty, action-movie business with a flurry of hard blows and faster edits.

From New York Times • Apr. 4, 2024

“We like to go for a good mix of wild and crazy buildings but also down-and-dirty bridges,” Wolf said.

From Seattle Times • Aug. 23, 2022

But they did make it onto the stage, backed by a string quartet and tearing through the down-and-dirty riffs of their opening number, Smile.

From BBC • Jun. 24, 2022

The group’s down-and-dirty approach was a response to the structural pretensions of the “stadium rock era,” as Sylvain said in a 2006 interview with Brooklyn Vegan.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 15, 2021

Wood got involved in a down-and-dirty lawsuit with the Cooke capitalists.

From The Hacker Crackdown, law and disorder on the electronic frontier by Sterling, Bruce

Related Words

• bawdy
• crude
• ribald
• vulgar