grime
/ɡɹaɪm/
grime noun: dirt, grease, soot, etc. that is ingrained and difficult to remove.
Noun
grime (uncountable)
- Dirt, grease, soot, etc. that is ingrained and difficult to remove.
- Underneath all that soot, dirt and grime is the true beauty of the church in soft shades of sandstone.
- […] ſhe ſweats a man may go ouer
ſhoes in the grime of it.c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
- A genre of urban music that emerged in London, England, in the early 2000s, primarily a development of UK garage, dancehall, and hip hop.
Verb
grime (third-person singular simple present grimes, present participle griming, simple past and past participle grimed)
- To begrime; to cake with dirt.
- All grimed with coaldust, they swing along the street with their dinner baskets and cans in their hands, chattering merrily.1862, Edwin Waugh, Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine
- Fog from the river rolled up the street and the windows were grimed by soot, but Cartwright had not turned on the electric light.1920, Harold Bindloss, Lister's Great Adventure
Proper noun capitalized: Grime
Grime (plural Grimes)
- A surname from Old Norse.
grime meaning in Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada
grime in Urdu
- کالک, نجس کرنا
grime in Malayalam
- smut, dirt, soot
- അഴുക്ക്, മാലിന്യം, കറ, മുട, കരി, ഇചികിലം
- blacken, dirty, stain
- അഴുക്കാക്കുക, വൃത്തിനഹീനമാക്കുക, മലിനപ്പെടുത്തുക, കറയാക്കുക, കരിപിടിപ്പിക്കുക, ദുഷിപ്പിക്കുക
grime in Kannada
- ಕೊಳೆ, ಇಲ್ಲಣ
Examples of grime in a sentence
- Just under the ceiling there were three lunette windows, heavily barred and blacked out in the normal way by centuries of grime.1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 14, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
- His skin was grimed with dust, for he had ridden hard in scorching heat, and was anxious and impatient to get on.1918, Harold Bindloss, The Buccaneer Farmer:
Forms of grime
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | grimes |
| present participle | griming |
| past participle | grimed |
| past | grimed |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Grimes |
| alternative form | Grim |
| alternative form | Grimes |
| alternative form | Grims |
| alternative form | Gryme |
| alternative form | Grymes |
| alternative form | Gryms |
Origin of grime
From Middle English grim (“dirt or soot covering the face”), from a specialized use of Old English grīma (“mask”), from Proto-West Germanic *grīmō, from Proto-Germanic *grīmô (“mask”). Likely influenced by dialectal Dutch grijmsel (“grit, grime”), Dutch grijm (“soot, grime”), Middle Dutch gryme (“mask”), Middle Low German greme (“dirt”), compare Danish grime (“a halter”), Danish grimet (“soiled, stripy”), Norwegian Bokmål grimete (“soiled, stripy”), Norwegian Nynorsk grimete (“soiled, stripy”).
From the Old Norse personal name Grímr.
Words formed from grime
Words that rhyme with grime
31 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about grime
- What does grime mean?
- Grime means dirt, grease, soot, etc. that is ingrained and difficult to remove.
- What is grime in Urdu?
- Grime in Urdu is کالک, نجس کرنا. See Grime meaning in Urdu.
- How do you use grime in a sentence?
- Just under the ceiling there were three lunette windows, heavily barred and blacked out in the normal way by centuries of grime.
- What part of speech is grime?
- Grime can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce grime?
- Grime is pronounced /ɡɹaɪm/.
Words near grime in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: grime (page history and authors); Grime (page history and authors); grime (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); grime (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); grime (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-grime.wav.
Cite this entry: “grime.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grime. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.