How to spell dirty

hear itdirt·y/'dɜrti/adjectiveSilent and tricky

What it means: Covered with mud, dust, or stains.

In a sentence: The pig loves to roll in the dirty mud.

The part people get wrong

Often misspelled as durty or dirtey.

Same family: dirt, dirtying, dirtier, dirtiest, dirty-minded. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Dirty comes from Middle English 'dritty', related to an Old Norse word for excrement, which is why it first meant literally soiled before gaining the figurative sense of ‘dishonest’ or ‘illegal’, as in 'dirty money' or 'dirty tricks'.

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