grimy
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of grimy
Explanation
Grimy things are so dirty that it takes some scrubbing to clean them. You'll probably feel pretty grimy after a day spent trying to fix the engine of an old car. When something is grimy, the dirt is ingrained or set in, not just on the surface. Jobs that leave you covered in oil, tar, or dirt are grimy. If you wear gloves to transplant your grandma's flowers, you won't end up with grimy fingernails. The adjective grimy comes from grime, "ingrained dirt," which goes back to a root that means "to smear."
Vocabulary lists containing grimy
The Sea of Monsters
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The Battle of the Labyrinth
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My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich
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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:
A plainspoken veteran with a dense beard and a closet full of grimy sweatshirts, Platner fit the bill.
From Slate ● Jul. 8, 2026
But his color palette is so grimy that it becomes a hindrance.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2026
I thought of the name of Tom Wolfe’s then-recent final novel, “Back to Blood”: The world is going back to something basic, grimy and tribal.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026
Cohn’s sound design also offered a taste of the grimy, intense New York of the 1970s, but he wanted to remain flexible in terms of period fidelity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2025
What a grimy place, he observed as he walked across the roof to the elevator.
From "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
This is a grimier entry, more likely to break with convention — one where the white mask of its serial killer Ghostface is scuffed up.
From New York Times ● Mar. 8, 2023
At the Brit Awards, they traded the fiery red aesthetic for a grimier, postapocalyptic, Mad Max-inspired look, drawing more from the music video’s auto “body shop” themes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 15, 2023
That’s some harsh harrumphing there, but those addled with a grimier affliction — American football — might have felt similar pangs during this season and this Heisman Trophy chase.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 29, 2021
The “Cinema Novo” movement of social realism commented and pushed back against this political shift, but in that same year, a singular iconoclast mounted a grimier, bloodier form of rebellion newly relevant to our present.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 30, 2020
It’s grimier than when I clean my usual spot at lunch.
From "The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl" by Stacy McAnulty
Deep-cleaning crews have visited many of the grimiest concrete subterranean stations — in some cases, for the first time in years.
From New York Times ● Jun. 25, 2017
“The difference in the game was we were playing basketball, and they were playing MMA,” Millsap said, frustrated after one of the grimiest 114-107 games you ever will witness.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 16, 2017
And it’s hands down, to quote Beyoncé, the grimiest song I’ve heard all year.
From Slate ● Sep. 2, 2014
Young Jon, however, insisted on driving around in a beat-up van and eating in the grimiest diners possible.
From Time ● May 12, 2011
Every inch of grass was covered with tents—row after crooked row of the grimiest, droopiest tents Nate had ever seen.
From I Survived the American Revolution, 1776 by Lauren Tarshis
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.
