Word.ws English Dictionary

grubby

/ˈɡɹʌbi/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Ireland/ˈɡɹʊbi/

grubby adjective: dirty, unwashed, unclean.

Adjective

grubby (comparative grubbier, superlative grubbiest)

  1. Dirty, unwashed, unclean.
    • He's a grubby little boy, always playing around by the stream.
  2. (figuratively) Disreputable, sordid.
    • I have in mind, in particular, the claim that has echoed through the liberal side of coronavirus-era debates — that the key to sound leadership in a pandemic is just to follow the science, to trust science and scientists, to do what experts suggest instead of letting mere grubby politics determine...2020 December 19, Ross Douthat, “When You Can’t Just ‘Trust the Science’”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  3. Having grubs in it.
    • The United States Department of Agriculture states that grubs cost the livestock industry from $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 each year. The average devaluation on grubby cattle is from 25 cents to one dollar per cwt.1944, National Live Stock Loss Prevention Board, Report, page 694

Noun

grubby (plural grubbies)

  1. (US, dialectal) Any species of Cottus; a sculpin.

grubby meaning in Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada

grubby in Tamil

தூய்மையற்ற

grubby in Malayalam

വൃത്തികെട്ട, അഴുക്കടഞ്ഞ, മലിനമായ, പുഴുക്കൾ നിറഞ്ഞ, പുഴുത്ത

grubby in Kannada

ಕೊಳಕು, ಮಾಸಲು

Examples of grubby in a sentence

  • Get your grubby paws off my things!
  • Though I knew we shouldn't be there, she pulled me out of the tunnel and into the dark layup, its floors still grubby from the morning commute many hours ago.
  • A grubby, shirtless guy in sweatpants and bare feet rushed out of the building.

All 18 example sentences with grubby

Synonyms of grubby

12 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of grubby

Forms of grubby

Adjective
comparativegrubbier
superlativegrubbiest
Noun
pluralgrubbies

Origin of grubby

From grub + -y.

Words formed from grubby

Words that rhyme with grubby

4 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about grubby

What does grubby mean?
Grubby means dirty, unwashed, unclean.
What is grubby in Tamil?
Grubby in Tamil is தூய்மையற்ற. See Grubby meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is grubby?
Grubby can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce grubby?
Grubby is pronounced /ˈɡɹʌbi/.

Words near grubby in the dictionary

  1. Grubbs' catalyst
  2. Grubbs' catalysts
  3. Grubbs' test
  4. Grubbs' tests
  5. Grubbses
  6. grubby
  7. Grube
  8. Gruber
  9. Grubers
  10. grubfish
  11. grubfishes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grubby (page history and authors); grubby (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); grubby (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); grubby (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-grubby.wav.

Cite this entry: “grubby.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grubby. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.