Word.ws English Dictionary

mirky

mirky is the dated form of murky.

Meaning of murky

Adjective

murky (comparative murkier, superlative murkiest)

  1. Hard to see through, as a fog or mist.
    • The Streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their glory, should be seen on a dark, dull, murky, winter's night, when there is just enough damp gently stealing down to make the pavement greasy without cleansing it of any of its impurities, […]1837, “Boz” [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], “The Streets by Night”, in Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of Every-day Life, and Every-day People. The Second Series, London: John Macrone, […], →OCLC, page 19
  2. Dark, dim, gloomy.
    • Ferdinand: As I hope / For quite dayes, faire Iſſue, and long life, / With ſuch loue, as 'tis now the murkieſt den, / The moſt opportune place, the ſtrongſt ſuggeſtion, / Our worſer Genius can, shall neuer melt / Mine honor into luſt,[…]1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
  3. Cloudy, indistinct, obscure.
    • murky waters
  4. (broadly) Dishonest, shady.
    • Ever since X-Men: First Class set the series' clock back a few decades and installed Michael Fassbender's moody Magneto and James McAvoy's louche Charles Xavier as replacements for Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart's chess-playing pappies, the big-screen X-Men's central conflict—Xavier's Booker T....2016 May 23, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, “Apocalypse pits the strengths of the X-Men series against the weaknesses”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 24 May 2016

Forms of mirky

comparativemirkier
superlativemirkiest

Words formed from mirky

Questions about mirky

What is mirky the dated form of?
Mirky is the dated form of murky.

Words near mirky in the dictionary

  1. Mirkovic
  2. Mirkovich
  3. mirks
  4. mirksome
  5. Mirkwood
  6. mirky
  7. mirligoes
  8. mirliton
  9. mirlitons
  10. Mirll
  11. mirmecochory

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mirky (page history and authors); murky (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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Cite this entry: “mirky.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mirky. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.