dirt

CEFRA1

/dɜːt/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    Loose earth or soil.

  2. 02

    noun

    Something that makes a person or place unclean.

Examples

  • When Mary was a child, her family was dirt poor.

  • He will make you eat dirt.

At a glance

Sits at A1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
3

Also pronounced

  • [deːθ̠]
  • /deːt/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. A stain or spot (on clothes etc); any foreign substance that worsens appearance.

  2. Previously unknown facts or rumors about a person.

  3. Soil or earth.

More examples

In context

  • His clothes were covered in dirt.

  • The reporter uncovered the dirt on the businessman by going undercover.

  • honours […] thrown away upon dirt and infamy

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

After gardening, she brushed the loose blank from her trousers.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English drit (“excrement”), from Old Norse drit (“excrement”), from Proto-Germanic *dritą, *dritō (“excrement”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreyd-, *treydʰ- (“to have diarrhea”). Cognate with dialectal Danish and Norn drit (“excrement”), Norwegian dritt (“excrement”), dialectal Swedish dret (“shit”), Faroese and Icelandic drit (“bird excrement”), Dutch drijten (“to defecate”), drits (“dirt, mud, filth”), drijt and dreet (“excrement”), Low German drieten (“to defecate”), Driet (“shit”), regional German Driss (“shit”), Old English ġedrītan (“to defecate”). The word originally referred to excrement before shifting to the current sense of "soil". For a semantic parallel, see Norwegi...