Grubby

//ˈɡɹʌbi// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Any species of Cottus; a sculpin. US, dialectal
  2. 2
    small sculpin of the coast of New England wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Dirty, unwashed, unclean.

    "He's a grubby little boy, always playing around by the stream."

  2. 2
    Disreputable, sordid. figuratively

    "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 your response."

  3. 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."

Adjective
  1. 1
    thickly covered with ingrained dirt or soot wordnet
  2. 2
    infested with grubs wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
beat upbeat-upbedraggledbefouledbegrimedbegrimed

Example

More examples

"The man is wearing grubby clothes."

Etymology

From grub + -y.

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