grime
Americannoun
-
dirt, soot, or other filthy matter, especially adhering to or embedded in a surface.
-
a style of music influenced by rap, ragga, etc., and characterized by lyrics and imagery that reference the dark side of urban life.
verb (used with object)
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grimes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
grimed,
past participle, past
-
griming
present participle
noun
-
dirt, soot, or filth, esp when thickly accumulated or ingrained
-
a genre of music originating in the East End of London and combining elements of garage, hip-hop, rap, and jungle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
grimesimple
-
grimessimple
-
have grimedperfect
-
has grimedperfect
-
am grimingprogressive
-
are grimingprogressive
-
is grimingprogressive
-
have been grimingperfect progressive
-
has been grimingperfect progressive
Past
-
grimedsimple
-
had grimedperfect
-
was grimingprogressive
-
were grimingprogressive
-
had been grimingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of grime
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English grim; apparently special use of Old English grīma “mask,” to denote layer of dust; compare dialectal Dutch grijm
Explanation
Grime is gross, greasy, ingrained dirt, like the grime on your neighbor's van that tempts you to write "Clean Me" in it with your finger. You may find grime under your fingernails for days after your auto mechanics class, black oily dirt that requires a lot of scrubbing to remove. It's less common, but you can also use this word as a verb, meaning to make something this dirty: "They're going to grime the kitchen floor if they don't take their boots off!" The Germanic root of grime means "to smear."
Vocabulary lists containing grime
Talk Like Shakespeare Day, List 6
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Born Behind Bars
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The Night Diary
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Outside the ward, staff used water to clean the floor, while others rubbed soot and grime off the walls.
From Barron's ● Aug. 27, 2026
No one seems to mind the industrial grime.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026
Signs of poor cleaning include strong urine odors, dirty floors, and visible grime.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 13, 2026
Nearby, a municipal flagpole is rusted, palm trees are dead, handrails are covered with stickers and a sign establishing a “Special Enforcement and Cleaning Zone” is covered with grime and graffiti.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2026
I watched with the profoundest satisfaction as five days of grime ran down my legs and out the drainhole, and noticed with astonished gratitude that my body had taken on a noticeably svelter profile.
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
The different greases and grimes each part creates.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2022
Sabela grimes for their performances in “The Motherboard Suite”; and Annique Roberts, for her work with the dance company Ronald K. Brown/Evidence.
From New York Times ● Oct. 12, 2021
Sabela grimes, is a bit of a departure in that it's more heavily Afro-Cuban than salsa-influenced.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 16, 2016
Boucher has written, on Tumblr, that “claire and grimes are completely different ppl at this point,” and has said, of a disappointing performance, “It wasn’t a Grimes show…. It was Claire pretending to be Grimes.”
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 19, 2015
Brushing away the powder grimes that had settled in his face, Custer looked over the boiling sea of fury around him, peering through the smoke for some signs of Reno and Benteen, but seeing none.
From The Great Salt Lake Trail by Henry Inman
Peter's troubles and the damage he causes are terrible in close-up, but seen through a broader lens grimed up by reality, they're almost tolerable.
From Salon ● Nov. 1, 2020
Wong’s works are as outré as Tseng’s are hermetic, landscapes that obscure the painter and take in the men — usually men, mostly Latino — behind the grimed facades of Manhattan’s then-frayed edges.
From New York Times ● Apr. 12, 2018
Scrap that off-brand toaster oven they’ve grimed up beyond recognition and buy them Cuisinart’s CSO-300 Steam Oven, capable of cutting cooking times by 40 percent.
From Newsweek
Somervell crawled out, greasy & grimed, wrench in hand, to salute his chief.
From Time Magazine Archive
Dry mud caked his tawny hair and grimed his face.
From "The Black Cauldron" by Lloyd Alexander
There was no gilding the lily, or rather the opposite: no griming the garbage can.
From Slate ● Dec. 20, 2016
Tears gleamed on the stern fighter's cheeks, there in the ghostly blue firelight—tears that washed little courses through the dust and sand now griming his face.
From The Flying Legion by George Allan England
The confused indigene, driven by admonition and shame put on the hot and griming stuffs, and finally, had them kept on him by statute.
From Nonsenseorship by G. G. Putnam
Just as the cakes became heavier, tougher, more ordinary, as the months passed, so the whole enterprise suffered gradually from that coarsening and griming which seems an inevitable result of Chicago use.
From One Woman's Life by Robert Herrick
He picked up the book, griming the dainty pages as he turned them with his rough fingers, glancing at the headings.
From Hidden Water by Maynard Dixon
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
