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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

grime.

Dirt, grease, soot, etc. that is ingrained and difficult to remove.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɡɹaɪm/
  1. Dirt, grease, soot, etc. that is ingrained and difficult to remove.

    uncountable
    Underneath all that soot, dirt and grime is the true beauty of the church in soft shades of sandstone.
  2. A genre of urban music that emerged in London, England, in the early 2000s, primarily a development of UK garage, dancehall, and hip hop.

    uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English grim (“dirt or soot covering the face”), from a specialized use of Old English grīma (“mask”), from Proto-West Germanic *grīmō, from Proto-Germanic *grīmô (“mask”). Likely influenced by dialectal Dutch grijmsel (“grit, grime”), Dutch grijm (“soot, grime”), Middle Dutch gryme (“mask”), Middle Low German greme (“dirt”), compare Danish grime (“a halter”), Danish grimet (“soiled, stripy”), Norwegian Bokmål grimete (“soiled, stripy”), Norwegian Nynorsk grimete (“soiled, stripy”).

verb/ɡɹaɪm/
  1. To begrime; to cake with dirt.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English grim (“dirt or soot covering the face”), from a specialized use of Old English grīma (“mask”), from Proto-West Germanic *grīmō, from Proto-Germanic *grīmô (“mask”). Likely influenced by dialectal Dutch grijmsel (“grit, grime”), Dutch grijm (“soot, grime”), Middle Dutch gryme (“mask”), Middle Low German greme (“dirt”), compare Danish grime (“a halter”), Danish grimet (“soiled, stripy”), Norwegian Bokmål grimete (“soiled, stripy”), Norwegian Nynorsk grimete (“soiled, stripy”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.