grungy
Americanadjective
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ugly, run-down, or dilapidated.
a grungy, abandoned mill town.
-
dirty; filthy.
a pair of grungy sneakers.
adjective
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squalid or seedy
-
(of pop music) characterized by a loud fuzzy guitar sound
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of grungy
Explanation
Something grungy is very dirty, like the old sweatshirt that your dog dragged outside and used as a bed. Are your hands absolutely filthy after tinkering with the engine of your old car? Then they're grungy, so ingrained with dirt and oil that you'll have to scrub to get them clean. Dirty and sloppy things are grungy too, like the grungy outfit you wear when you spend the day taking care of your uncle's pet pigs. This informal American slang word is probably influenced by both dingy and grubby.
Vocabulary lists containing grungy
The Sea of Monsters
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The Battle of the Labyrinth
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Simon Sort of Says
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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:
Maybe L.A. voters took pity on visitors to their grungy city who are required to pay a surcharge merely to hail an Uber from Los Angeles International Airport.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 7, 2026
The rest of the album alternates between chaos and control, introspection and criticism, grungy beats and hazy surrealism.
From Salon ● Jun. 5, 2026
“Peter Hujar’s Day” and “Late Fame”: Two films I saw at this year’s festival concerned the grungy creative mystique of New York in the 1970s.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2025
Over grungy guitars and a slapping drum beat, Taylor taunts them with a touch of reverse psychology.
From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2025
The sound system alternately blared hip-hop and grungy emo rock as various DJs took turns pushing one another out of the way.
From "Shadowshaper" by Daniel José Older
Celeste took our breath away with a grungier, angrier sound than the floaty jazz-soul of her debut.
From BBC ● Jun. 29, 2025
It delivered Davis’s first gold and platinum albums, and shifted mainstream jazz from elegant arrangements optimized for cramped nightclubs to bigger, grungier structures tailor-made for stadium speakers.
From New York Times ● Mar. 28, 2023
“It was all dirtier and grungier and louder. You’d have to go to Aberdeen to find anything close to it, with Melvins and Nirvana.”
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 18, 2022
As budding singer-songwriters with distinctive voices and a penchant for wordplay, they offered a much-needed bridge from plasticine 1980s pop to a grungier, earthier 1990s-era sound.
From Salon ● Apr. 25, 2020
But always at the center is “Mike and Phil,” the two forces behind the show whose back-and-forth crossed many species for oddball sketches that at times resembled a grungier descendant of “South Park.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2018
Mr. Packard’s subjects are Los Angeles, its grungiest denizens, paranoia, and film itself.
From New York Times ● Jul. 20, 2018
Described by friends of the band as perhaps the group’s gothiest record, Taylor-Taylor considers This Machine the band’s grungiest.
From Time ● Apr. 25, 2012
"People are tired of finding the oldest, grungiest T shirt in a thrift store."
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
