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Glite Dictionary
🧼 Dirty 🐟 A small fish 🐛 Full of grubs
grubby

grubby

1 6.4
Full of small white grubs that eat plant roots
  • adjective
  • /ˈɡrʌbi/
translation icon : infestado de gusanos

Examples

  • Would you be willing to host a family of grubby hikers sometime between March and July 2013?

    Blog text (22)

  • Grubby little parasite.

    Crocodile Dundee II (1988)

  • The garden was infested with grubby insects that destroyed the vegetables.

  • After the rain, the playground was muddy and grubby, making it unsuitable for the children to play.

  • The old shed was filled with grubby grubs that had taken over the rotting wood.

Synonyms

crawly
vsgrubby
  • Informal
4 6.1

Full of small animals like insects that crawl

focuses on being infested by larvae rather than just having crawling animals present
wormy
vsgrubby
2 6.0

Having holes or soft parts because worms have eaten it

is about infestation specifically by insect larvae rather than general burrowers

Compounds

grubby t-shirt
3.8

A t-shirt that is dirty or looks unwashed

Surface Forms

grubby positive

Morphology

grubby = grub (transparent) = grub + y

This sense is directly compositional: 'grub' + '-y' means affected by or full of grubs.

Etymology

Grubby in this sense comes from grub, the name for a small 'young insect' that lives in soil. If roots or stored vegetables are full of grubs, they are called 'grubby' because of the insects. So grubby here means 'infested with grubs'.