Sordid means dirty and morally low. A sordid affair, the sordid details, sordid little room.
It carries both meanings at once — a sordid room is squalid and a sordid affair is shabby in its motives, and the word lets the second borrow the disgust of the first. The sordid details is almost a fixed phrase, and usually about money or sex.
1adjectivesordidDirty and morally low.
“They lived in a sordid little flat above a noisy bar.”
sordid is a quality of squalor.
Latin sordidus means dirty, from sordes, filth. The moral sense came with the word into English.
Latin
sordidus
Middle English
sordid
English, today
sordid
From Middle English sordid, from Latin sordidus. From Middle English sordide, from Latin sordidus. Alternatively from French sordide.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA