Filthy

How to spell filthy

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce filthy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does filthy mean?

1. adjectiveDisgustingly dirty or covered in grime.
2. adjectiveMorally offensive, obscene, or indecent.

Filthy in a sentence

• The kitchen floor was filthy after the flood receded.

• The comedian was banned for telling filthy jokes during the broadcast.

• He refused to sit on the filthy bench until someone wiped it down.

• She deleted the filthy comment before her parents could read it.

Where does filthy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English noun 'fylth', meaning foulness, corruption, or impurity, which was itself built on the adjective 'ful', the ancestor of modern 'foul'. The change of vowel from 'foul' to 'filth' is an example of i-mutation, an old Germanic sound shift in which a following sound altered the root vowel. By adding the everyday adjective ending '-y', meaning 'full of' or 'characterised by', English produced 'filthy' to describe something laden with dirt. Over time the word also picked up a moral edge, so that 'filthy' could describe obscene language or, more recently and informally, a vast amount of money, as in 'filthy rich'. The spelling is reliably phonetic, though the cluster of consonants in 'lth' can briefly trip up a fast writer.

How the word is built

• filth (from Old English fylth: foulness)
• -y (adjective suffix: full of)