adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1. 1
   Having a soulless devotion to facts and figures; inflexibly utilitarian.

   "But today's winning businesses are positively Gradgrindian in their pursuit of the truth."

Synonyms

All synonyms

gradgrindish

Example

More examples

"But today's winning businesses are positively Gradgrindian in their pursuit of the truth."

Etymology

From Gradgrind + -ian, name of a pedantic character in Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.