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dirtier

adjectiveA2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,866 of 15,258leans spoken

Dirtier means less clean than before. Dirtier than yesterday, gets dirtier, dirtier still.

It is the comparative of dirty, with the y turning to i as in happier. Of fuel and industry it means producing more pollution — a dirtier power station. Of a joke or a fight it means more indecent or more unfair. Note that dirt comes from a Norse word for excrement.

Definitions of dirtier

  1. 1adjectivedirtierLess clean than before.A2+

    “The kitchen looked even dirtier after the children tried to clean it.”

dirtier is a comparison of cleanliness.

Where it comes from

  1. Middle English

    dirti

  2. English

    dirty

  3. English, today

    dirtier

dirty comes from Middle English dirti, alteration of earlier dritti, equivalent to dirt + y. Cognate with Middle Low German drēterich (“dirty”). See also drite.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

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dirtier in the wild

  • In 1998 they added second guitarist Lars Swenson and began cultivating a dirtier '70s glam-rock sound, as heard on their eMpTy Records releases.

    The Catheters

  • Load management can also help reduce harmful emissions, since peaking plants or backup generators are often dirtier and less efficient than base load power plants.

    Load management

  • The album is a departure from the band's previous releases, which had more screaming and a dirtier sound to them.

    Best Kind of Mess

  • I mean, I've done a lot of sleazy movies and things in my life, but I never felt dirtier than after I saw Boogie Nights.

    On the Prowl (film series)

  • In regards to the album, Dave Wyndorf told Blabbermouth:"With 'Cobras And Fire', I wanted to present these songs in a much stranger and dirtier atmosphere.

    Cobras and Fire (The Mastermind Redux)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.