1. Not clean, or likely to soil with dirt or grime
   "dirty unswept pavements"; "a child in dirty overalls"; "piles of dirty dishes"; "put his dirty feet on the clean sheet"; "mining is a dirty job";
   - soiled, unclean
    
2. (of colour) discoloured by impurities; not bright and clear; ‘dirty’ is often used in combination
   "a dirty white"; "dirty-green walls"; "dirty-blonde hair";
   - dingy, muddied, muddy
    
3. (of behaviour or especially language) characterized by obscenity or indecency
   "dirty books and movies"; "boys telling dirty jokes"; "has a dirty mouth"; "dirty words"; "a dirty old man"
    
4. Unethical or dishonest
   "dirty police officers";
   - sordid, shoddy, gimcrack
    
5. Violating accepted standards or rules
   "a dirty fighter";
   - cheating, foul, unsporting, unsportsmanlike
    
6. Obtained illegally or by improper means
   "dirty money";
   - ill-gotten, misbegotten
    
7. Vile; despicable
   "a dirty trick";
   - filthy, lousy [informal], cruddy [informal]
    
8. Expressing or revealing hostility or dislike
   "dirty looks"
    
9. Spreading pollution or contamination; especially radioactive contamination
   "the air near the foundry was always dirty"; "a dirty bomb releases enormous amounts of long-lived radioactive fallout";
   - contaminating
    
10. Contaminated with infecting organisms
    "dirty wounds";
    - pestiferous
     
11. (of a manuscript) defaced with changes
    "dirty copy";
    - foul, marked-up
     
12. Unpleasantly stormy
    "there's dirty weather in the offing"

1. Make soiled, filthy, or dirty
   "don't dirty your clothes when you play outside!";
   - soil, begrime, grime, colly [archaic], bemire [archaic]

1. [Brit, informal] Used as an intensifier
   "watching the cricket with a dirty big grin";
   - very, really, real [N. Amer, informal], rattling [informal], thoroughly, cracking [Brit, informal], mucho [informal], rotten [informal], massively [informal], jolly [Brit, informal], magnificently, splendidly, awesomely [informal], tremendously [informal]
    
2. In an unfair manner
   "He played dirty during the match";
   - unfairly, below the belt

Derived forms: dirtier, dirtied, dirtying, dirtiest, dirties

See also: Augean, awful, bawdy, bedraggled, befouled, begrimed, black, blasphemous, blue [informal], buggy, cleanness, cobwebbed, cobwebby, corrupt, cruddy [informal], dingy, dirty-faced, dirty-minded, draggled, feculent, filthy, flyblown, foul, fouled, foul-mouthed, foul-spoken, greasy, grimy, grotty [Brit, informal], grubby [informal], grungy [informal], hostile, illegal, illegible, impure, indecent, infected, lewd, lousy, maculate [literary], manky [Brit, informal], mucky, muddy, nasty, obscene, off-color [US], off-colour [Brit, Cdn], oily, procellous [archaic], profane, ratty, raunchy [informal], ribald, salacious, scabrous, scatological, scroungy [US, informal], scummy, scungy [Austral, NZ, informal], septic, skanky [informal], skeevy [US, informal], smudgy, smutty, snot-nosed [informal], snotty [informal], sooty, sordid, squalid, stormy, travel-soiled, travel-stained, uncleanly [archaic], unfair, unjust, unswept, untidy, unwashed

Type of: alter, change, modify

Antonym: clean

Encyclopedia: Dirty, Dangerous and Difficult