grubby
1 Americannoun
adjective
-
dirty; slovenly
-
mean; beggarly
-
infested with grubs
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of grubby1
First recorded in 1605–15; grub + -y 1
Origin of grubby2
Origin uncertain
Explanation
Grubby things are really dirty, like your little sister's grubby hands after she's spent an afternoon making mud pies. Have you ever seen a little kid eat a chocolate ice cream cone on a hot day? Picture the kid's face covered in chocolate and you'll have a good idea of what grubby means! This adjective dates back to the mid-19th century, from grub, which means "insect larva" and which was once colloquially used to mean "dirty child."
Vocabulary lists containing grubby
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
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The Magician's Nephew
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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:
Print and cinema’s strings are being pulled by the grubby, greedy hands of executives who care far more about money and expediency than art and process.
From Salon ● May 1, 2026
I understand every grubby, rotten impulse of the bereaved.
From Slate ● Apr. 23, 2026
For admirers who like their Bard semidivine, it’s unappealing to think of him amid these grubby realities.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 7, 2025
"After a really busy summer the city can look a bit grubby and that's just because we don't have the money to keep it to a good standard," he said.
From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2025
“Any boy with grubby fingers can flail about. Only you can open it. You are Anansesem—act like it.”
From "Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky" by Kwame Mbalia
As the name suggests, From The Pyre is darker, grubbier, more gothically grandiose than their critically acclaimed debut, Prelude To Ecstasy.
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2025
After picking up trash on Earth Day, I suggest a grubbier summation: We are what we toss.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 30, 2023
By the early 1960s, the crowds were seedier, the clubs grubbier and the production all but gone.
From New York Times ● Jun. 29, 2022
But then she talks about the rewards of being a bus driver, especially with those riders whose appearance is grubbier than others’.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 4, 2020
It could hardly have been grubbier if he had first rubbed his hands in the earth, and then had a good cry, and then dried his face with his hands.
From "The Magician's Nephew" by C. S. Lewis
His passion for theater, from its grubbiest particulars to its headiest heights, is the thread that binds together a slightly miscellaneous collection.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 27, 2021
The final reason practical effects are hip again is the grubbiest: they’re a piece of the swag we call “fan service.”
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 20, 2016
Sean Ingle dons his grubbiest Columbo mac to investigate.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 1, 2010
"He went to the grubbiest children and hugged and kissed them."
From Time Magazine Archive
The third passenger, the grubbiest of the three grubs, was a nondescript of whose presence Jerry was not even aware until she heard his voice.
From The Reclaimers by McCarter, Margaret Hill
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.
