grubby

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

It also exposed the AI boom’s underbelly: the grubby sidedeals, financial anxieties, short tempers and personal vendettas that have shaped modern technology every bit as much as the march toward machine consciousness.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 16, 2026

Print and cinema’s strings are being pulled by the grubby, greedy hands of executives who care far more about money and expediency than art and process.

From Salon • May 1, 2026

I understand every grubby, rotten impulse of the bereaved.

From Slate • Apr. 23, 2026

"After a really busy summer the city can look a bit grubby and that's just because we don't have the money to keep it to a good standard," he said.

From BBC • Oct. 1, 2025

For four months of the year he attended to patients in Boston at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and lived as a bachelor in a grubby church rectory in a poor neighborhood called Roxbury.

From "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and Michael French