Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Earth or soil.
  • noun A filthy or soiling substance, such as mud or dust.
  • noun Excrement.
  • noun A squalid or filthy condition.
  • noun One that is mean, contemptible, or vile.
  • noun Obscene language or subject matter.
  • noun Malicious or scandalous gossip.
  • noun Information that embarrasses or accuses.
  • noun Unethical behavior or practice; corruption.
  • noun Material, such as gravel or slag, from which metal is extracted in mining.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Any foul or filthy substance, as excrement, mud, mire, or pitch; whatever, adhering to anything, renders it foul, unclean, or offensive.
  • noun Earth, especially loose earth; disintegrated soil, as in gardens; hence, any detrital or disintegrated material.
  • noun Specifically In placer-mining, the detrital material (usually sand and gravel) from which the gold is separated by washing.
  • noun Meanness; sordidness; baseness.
  • noun Abusive or scurrilous language.
  • Consisting or made of loose earth: as, a dirt road (a road not paved or macadamized).
  • To make foul or filthy; soil; befoul; dirty.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To make foul of filthy; to dirty.
  • noun Any foul of filthy substance, as excrement, mud, dust, etc.; whatever, adhering to anything, renders it foul or unclean; earth.
  • noun Meanness; sordidness.
  • noun In placer mining, earth, gravel, etc., before washing.
  • noun (Geom.) a layer of clayey earth forming a stratum in a geological formation. Dirt beds are common among the coal measures.
  • noun (Med.) Same as Chthonophagia.
  • noun clay or mud molded by children in imitation of pastry.
  • noun to submit in a meanly humble manner to insults; to eat humble pie.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun soil or earth
  • noun A stain or spot (on clothes etc); any foreign substance that worsens appearance
  • noun Previously unknown negative facts (or invented "facts") about a person, gossip
  • verb transitive, rare To make foul or filthy; soil; befoul; dirty

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun obscene terms for feces
  • adjective (of roads) not leveled or drained; unsuitable for all year travel
  • noun disgraceful gossip about the private lives of other people
  • noun the part of the earth's surface consisting of humus and disintegrated rock
  • noun the state of being covered with unclean things

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, variant of drit, excrement, filth, mud, from Old Norse.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English drit ("excrement"), probably from Old Norse drit ("exrement"), from Proto-Germanic *dritan, *dritō (“excrement”), from Proto-Indo-European *dhreid-, *treidh- (“to have diarrhea”). Cognate with Norwegian dritt ("excrement"), Icelandic drit ("bird exrement"), Dutch drits ("dirt, mud, filth"), dreet ("excrement"), Old English ġedrītan ("to defecate"), Albanian ndyrë ("dirty, filthy").

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Examples

  • More Sarah Palin dirt is coming out, as you can see in this Fox News video clip.

    Oprah’s Secret Visit to South Africa 2008

  • INTC shares were back under $20 recently, which makes the name dirt cheap at current levels with a price to earnings ratio of just 8.8X and a forward PE of 7.8X or so.

    unknown title 2011

  • I love the idea of the marble pressed into the dirt is the bowl of sky we see elsewhere.

    Clusterbook #1 | clusterflock 2009

  • He was raised in what he called dirt-poor surroundings in the small west Texas town of Seth Ward, near Plainview.

    Jimmy Dean obituary 2010

  • In the presidential campaign, also, Barack Obama is fighting back against what he calls dirt lies and nonsense about him and his wife.

    CNN Transcript Jun 12, 2008 2008

  • That they'll continue to clean up what they call the dirt on television.

    CNN Transcript Jun 26, 2008 2008

  • That they'll continue to clean up what they call the dirt on television.

    CNN Transcript Jun 26, 2008 2008

  • He was raised in what he called dirt-poor surroundings in the small west Texas town of Seth

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • "Back of my neck gettin 'dirt and gritty," indeed.

    Jack Bog's Blog: August 2009 Archives 2009

  • I was talking w/hubby about the book - he read a little while I was on my walk - and he mentioned that I already had a couple of tattoos: a pencil lead in my right thigh and clump of dirt from a nasty cat claw!

    Tattoo Machine (copy) ____Maggie 2009

Comments

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  • '"If someone dared you to eat dirt, you could, couldn't you?" he asked condescendingly.

    'I wrinkled my nose. "I did once... on a dare," I admitted. "It wasn't so bad."' -Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

    '"I've got a jar of di-irt! I've got a jar of di-irt!"' -Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest

    February 21, 2008

  • Live dirt up a side track carted is a putrid evil.

    October 18, 2008

  • The dear and precious living substance that is formed upon the regolith on our planet. See Dirt!, the movie. I'd be glad to be as vibrant and teeming as dirt, but might not be, so long as my remains breathe walk upon this earth.

    March 5, 2011