dirt

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A substance such as mud or dust that makes things unclean.

   His shoes were covered in dirt after the hike.

2. 2
   noun

   Loose earth or soil on the ground.

   The children were digging in the dirt looking for worms.

3. 3
   noun

   Damaging or shameful information about someone.

   The reporter dug up some dirt on the politician.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Dirt comes from Old Scandinavian drit, meaning “excrement.” English initially preserved both that meaning and the form drit, but dirt gradually replaced it; dirty is recorded from late Middle English.

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 referre…

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary