How to Use grubby in a Sentence

grubby

adjective
  • He lives in a grubby little apartment.
  • Go over grubby spots again with dish soap where needed.
    — Brandee Gruener, Southern Living, 16 Sep. 2025
  • Tape and grips start out all sparkly clean but get grubby pretty quick.
    — Joe Lindsey, Outside Online, 17 July 2021
  • The actors aren’t grubby or sweaty, and their clothes are neatly pressed.
    — Christopher Arnott, Hartford Courant, 12 Feb. 2024
  • The fate of London now rests in Lamb’s grubby hands.
    — Scott Tobias, Vulture, 22 Oct. 2025
  • Heaven help the grubby finger that even attempts to graze their wings.
    — Goth Shakira, Los Angeles Times, 16 Sep. 2024
  • So my main goal here is for the Gators to keep their grubby mitts off our budding Belichick.
    — David Whitley, OrlandoSentinel.com, 2 Nov. 2017
  • Outside, a half-dozen grubby children crowded around a cooking fire, some of them naked from the waist down.
    — Ty McCormick, Washington Post, 2 Feb. 2018
  • Style him in grubby cowboy clothes and long hair and tell him to shoot dead the pristine John Wayne.
    — Matt Goulet, Esquire, 18 Sep. 2017
  • Ever get the urge to scurry around cities and fight the patriarchy with your grubby little hands?
    — Haley Strack, National Review, 11 Aug. 2023
  • Who knows what kinds of diseases 6-year-olds carry on their grubby little fingers?
    — New York Times, 23 May 2018
  • To clean a really grubby baseboard, use a cloth and soapy water to remove dirt and stains.
    — Brandee Gruener, Southern Living, 20 Nov. 2025
  • Looks pretty grubby and in need of a Freddie Mercury, but why not?
    — Dave Holmes, Esquire, 20 May 2015
  • This president simply moved the rock and gave light and air to all the nasty, grubby things underneath.
    — Jason Johnson, The Root, 16 Aug. 2017
  • Gel polish, on the other hand, is more porous, which explains why bright whites and light pinks tend to look grubby with wear.
    — Sophie Wirt, Glamour, 21 Nov. 2022
  • This is a grubby land grab with just about as much sordidness of the Teapot Dome affair.
    — Tim Hogan, The Denver Post, 31 Jan. 2020
  • Players use spellbook-style molds to make little grubby monster pieces to fight against each other in the game.
    — Rob Wieland, Forbes, 16 Dec. 2024
  • The grubby world Ray inhabits looks like ours, but the details are slightly skewed.
    — Kate Knibbs, Wired, 25 Feb. 2021
  • But at the same time, the lobby smelled like a bathroom, and the bathrooms themselves were as grubby as a highway rest stop.
    — Mike Sutter, ExpressNews.com, 2 Jan. 2020
  • Washing your grubby mitts is one of the all-time best ways to cut your chances of getting sick and spreading harmful germs to others.
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 6 Apr. 2018
  • Manson starts the ‘60s as a grubby little inmate whose rap sheet—prison buggery aside—is a bunch of crap.
    — Matt Thompson, Spin, 10 Sep. 2023
  • When our hands were too grubby to accept a stick of gum, Eva went around and placed a piece in each of our mouths like a communion wafer.
    — Sonya Bennett-Brandt, WIRED, 22 Dec. 2022
  • But in the grubby bazaar of politician-buying, the NRA is a bit player.
    — Jonah Goldberg, National Review, 6 Oct. 2017
  • With a powerfully raw script and a gritty aesthetic, the film captured two men at the end of their grubby ropes.
    — Debby Wolfinsohn, EW.com, 11 Apr. 2023
  • The man looks nothing like the usual upscale Buckhead business crowd; this guy is rough and grubby, with no hint of a smile.
    — Lizz Schumer, Peoplemag, 3 Aug. 2024
  • The tender message is accompanied with a photo of the couple’s grubby feet, framed by waves rolling in on the beach.
    — Lars Brandle, Billboard, 8 Oct. 2020
  • Early on there’s a tense, violent clash in a grubby trailer that begins with mace in the eyes and ends with fatal gunshots.
    — Michael Phillips, chicagotribune.com, 10 Aug. 2017
  • The beach was a grubby rectangle of sand, set beneath an elevated highway and a row of street lamps that shone down on us at night.
    — Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker, 8 Jan. 2024
  • The Belvedere is one of the old buildings in Queens whose name conjures up a sense of grandiosity in our grubby city lives.
    — Clio Chang, Curbed, 25 Feb. 2025
  • The drive to Oakland passes in a dream of sunshine and grubby rest areas and Starbucks.
    — Claire Dederer, New York Times, 25 Sep. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'grubby.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: