Grime

How to spell grime

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce grime

What does grime mean?

1. nounDirt or soot that has become deeply ingrained on a surface.
2. nounA genre of electronic dance music that emerged in London, marked by fast beats and rapped vocals.

Grime in a sentence

• Years of grime had darkened the kitchen tiles.

• The festival booked several grime artists from East London.

• She scrubbed the grime off the old window frames.

• He produces grime tracks in his bedroom studio.

Where does grime come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Grime comes from the Germanic family of words for ingrained dirt, and it most likely entered English in the late 1500s by way of Middle Dutch or Middle Low German grime, meaning 'dirt smeared on the face' or 'a smut'. The same family gives Flemish grijm and is related to old Germanic words for soot and blackness. Originally it carried the sense of dark soot rubbed deeply into the skin, which is why grime still suggests dirt that has worked its way in rather than dust lying loosely on a surface. The single short vowel sound is spelled with a 'silent e' that lengthens the i, the same pattern seen in 'time' and 'crime', and that tidy spelling is the main thing to remember. In modern British usage the word also names a genre of electronic dance music that emerged in East London in the early 2000s, borrowing the gritty, streetwise feel of the original meaning.

How the word is built

• grime (single root meaning ingrained dirt; no prefix or suffix)