Other forms: grimes
Grime is dirt that has been left long enough to stick. City grime, ingrained grime, scrub off the grime.
It is dirt plus time, and the greasiness is what makes it cling, which is why it needs a detergent rather than water. Grime is also a British genre of music, born in east London in the early 2000s and now a whole scene of its own.
1noungrimeDirt that has been left long enough to stick.
“It took hours to scrub the grime off the old oven.”
grime is dirt.
Middle English grim meant soot on the face, from an Old English word for a mask.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰrey-
Proto-Germanic
*grīmô — mask
Proto-West Germanic
*grīmō
Old English
grīma — mask
Middle English
grim — dirt or soot covering the face
English, today
grime
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”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA