dirt
UK/dɜːt//dɝt/
dirt noun: soil or earth.
Noun (1)
dirt (usually uncountable, plural dirts)
- Soil or earth.
- A stain or spot (on clothes etc); any foreign substance that worsens appearance.
- Synonyms:
- filth
- Previously unknown facts or rumors about a person.
- The reporter uncovered the dirt on the businessman by going undercover.
- Perhaps inevitably, as the manipulation of the stars' public images became ever more rigorous, so too did the efforts of gossip columnists such as Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper to uncover dirt and scandal.2011, David Puttnam, Movies and Money, Vintage, →ISBN
- Meanness; sordidness.
- honours […] thrown away upon dirt and infamy1810, W. Melmoth, transl., Letters of Pliny
- In placer mining, earth, gravel, etc., before washing.
- Freckles.
- I'm one of Charlie's Angels too, but I'm the one with the dirty face.1983, Pat Phoenix, Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt, page 158
- a dirty-faced redhead poked a soiled kerchief beneath my nose, and charmlessly wheedled, "Spare coppers, mister, Spare coppers!" This runny-nosed waif, a "knacker" in the Dublin vernacular, was of the traveling breed who had of late given up their painted wagons for the grimy ghettos of the city....2005, Kevin O'Hara, Last of the Donkey Pilgrims: A Man's Journey Through Ireland, page 244
- Excrement; dung.
- And the haft also went in after the blade: and the fatte closed vpon the blade, so that hee could not drawe the dagger out of his belly, and the dirt came out.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Judges 3:22
Verb
dirt (third-person singular simple present dirts, present participle dirting, simple past and past participle dirted)
Noun (2) capitalized: DIRT
DIRT (uncountable)
- Acronym of Deposit Interest Retention Tax.
dirt meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
dirt in Hindi
- soil or earth
- गंदगी gandgī, मैल, मिट्टी miṭṭī
dirt in Tamil
- soil or earth
- சறடு caṟaṭu
dirt in Marathi
- unclean matter
- घाण ghāṇ
- soil or earth
- धूळ dhūḷ
- stain or spot (on clothes etc)
- मळ maḷ
dirt in Urdu
- soil or earth
- مِٹّی miṭṭī, گَنْدَگی gandagī, میل mel
- stain or spot (on clothes etc)
- چِرْک cirk
More languagesFewer languages
- dirt in Telugu
- మురికి muriki, మరక maraka
- dirt in Sanskrit
- मल mala
- dirt in Assamese
- মলি moli, ওখল ükhol
- dirt in Nepali
- कसिङ्गर kasiṅgar, धुलो dhulo, मैलो mailo
- dirt in Tagalog
- dumi
- dirt in Arabic
- قَذَارَة qaḏāra, تُرْبَة turba, تُرَاب turāb, بُقْعَة buqʕa
- dirt in Thai
- ดิน din
- dirt in Vietnamese
- bụi, đất, bùn
- dirt in Myanmar
- ကြေး kre:, အညစ်အထည်း a.nyaca.htany:, အညစ်အကြေး a.nyaca.kre:
Examples of dirt in a sentence
- She figured most children probably ate a peck of dirt before they turned ten.
- (transitive) After about a mile, we pulled off the main road onto a dirt track.
- One shovelful of dirt makes a molehill; a million shovelfuls make a mountain.
Synonyms of dirt
Forms of dirt
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | dirts |
| alternative form | durt |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | dirts |
| present participle | dirting |
| past participle | dirted |
| past | dirted |
Origin of dirt
From Middle English drit (“excrement”), from Old Norse drit (“excrement”), from Proto-Germanic *dritą, *dritō (“excrement”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreyd-, *treydʰ- (“to have diarrhea”). Cognate with dialectal Danish and Norn drit (“excrement”), Norwegian dritt (“excrement”), dialectal Swedish dret (“shit”), Faroese and Icelandic drit (“bird excrement”), Dutch drijten (“to defecate”), drits (“dirt, mud, filth”), drijt and dreet (“excrement”), Low German drieten (“to defecate”), Driet (“shit”), regional German Driss (“shit”), Old English ġedrītan (“to defecate”). The word originally referred to excrement before shifting to the current sense of "soil". For a semantic parallel, see Norwegian skitt (“dirt, filth, grime, mud”), from Old Norse skítr (“shit”), which is cognate with English shit.
Words formed from dirt
- bedirt
- common as dirt
- dig up dirt
- dirt bag
- dirtbag
- dirtball
- dirt bath
- dirt bed
- dirt bike
- dirtbike
- dirtbird
- dirtboard
- dirt-box
- dirtbrain
- dirt cake
- dirt cheap
- dirt-cheap
- dirt chute
- dirt-dauber
- dirt dauber
- dirt devil
- dirten
- dirtfall
- dirt farmer
- dirt farming
- dirt file
- dirtful
- dirthead
- dirthole
- dirt jumping
- dirtless
- dirtlike
- dirtman
- dirt nap
- dirt pie
- dirt poor
- dirt-poor
- dirtproof
- dirt road
- dirt sandwich
- dirtside
- dirtsome
- dirt stache
- dirt sticks
- dirt track
- dirtwad
- dirty
- dirt yard
- dish the dirt
- dog dirt
- do someone dirt
- drag through the dirt
- dumb as dirt
- eat dirt
- fill dirt
- hit the dirt
- older than dirt
- pay dirt
- permanent dirt
- pound dirt
Phrases with dirt
- ate dirt
- Joe Dirt
- back dirt
- dirt bags
- dirt beds
- dirt naps
- dirt pies
- eats dirt
- wood dirt
- dirt biker
- dirt bikes
- dirt cakes
34 more phrasesFewer phrases
- dirt files
- dirt roads
- dirt yards
- eaten dirt
- throw dirt
- white dirt
- dirt chutes
- dirt devils
- dirt tracks
- dug up dirt
- eating dirt
- pounds dirt
- digs up dirt
- dirt daubers
- dirt farmers
- hit pay dirt
- pounded dirt
- hits pay dirt
- hits the dirt
- pounding dirt
- throw dirt on
- digging up dirt
- dirt sandwiches
- dished the dirt
- dishes the dirt
- take a dirt nap
- treat like dirt
- dishing the dirt
- hitting pay dirt
- hitting the dirt
- treats like dirt
- treated like dirt
- treating like dirt
- throw dirt enough, and some will stick
Words that rhyme with dirt
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- advert
- alert
- divert
- inert
- avert
- concert
- deconvert
- girt
- lirt
- shirt
- spurt
- subvert
- vert
- wort
- blurt
- chert
- curt
- desert
- dessert
- exert
- introvert
- Leaving Cert
- overt
- red alert
- sturt
- wert
- ambivert
- ambiverts
- apert
- Baie Verte
- begirt
- BERT
- birt
- dissert
- extrovert
- gert
- gurt
- insert
- Kurt
- pirate shirt
- poet shirt
- puffball skirt
- quirt
- reassert
- smirt
- unalert
- unhurt
- wedding shirt
Questions about dirt
- What does dirt mean?
- Dirt means soil or earth.
- What is dirt in Hindi?
- Dirt in Hindi is गंदगी (gandgī), मैल, मिट्टी (miṭṭī). See Dirt meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is dirt?
- Dirt can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce dirt?
- Dirt is pronounced /dɜːt/ (UK).
- What is the plural of dirt?
- The plural of dirt is dirts.
Words near dirt in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dirt (page history and authors); DIRT (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-dirt.ogg.
Cite this entry: “dirt.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dirt. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.