Word.ws English Dictionary

down and dirty

down and dirty adjective: thoroughly involved; hands-on.

Adjective

down and dirty (comparative more down and dirty, superlative most down and dirty)

  1. (informal) Thoroughly involved; hands-on.
    • You also need to remember that it's rare to find someone in a C-suite or on a board who knows how to get down and dirty with IT, who knows the difference between a firewall and a fire exit.2004 December, CSO, volume 3, number 12, page 53

Forms of down and dirty

comparativemore down and dirty
superlativemost down and dirty

Questions about down and dirty

What does down and dirty mean?
Down and dirty means thoroughly involved; hands-on.
What part of speech is down and dirty?
Down and dirty is an adjective.

Words near down and dirty in the dictionary

  1. Dowlings
  2. dowlne
  3. dowls
  4. Dowman
  5. down
  6. down and dirty
  7. down and distance
  8. down and out
  9. down and outs
  10. down antiquark
  11. down antiquarks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: down and dirty (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.

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