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down-and-dirty
[doun-uhn-dur-tee]
adjective
unscrupulous; nasty.
a down-and-dirty election campaign.
earthy; funky.
down and dirty
adjective
ruthlessly competitive or underhand
if Bush gets down and dirty the Governor will give as good as he gets
uninhibited; frank
Word History and Origins
Origin of down-and-dirty1
Idioms and Phrases
Vicious, not governed by rules of decency, as in The candidates are getting down and dirty early in the campaign . [ Slang ; early 1980s]
Very earthy, uninhibitedly sexual. For example, “L.A. club people rarely get down and dirty on a dance floor” ( The New Yorker , May 21, 1990). [Late 1980s]
Example Sentences
Other times she visited the bay and engaged in her own down-and-dirty research.
I immediately replied yes, envisioning that I’d swim with sharks in South Africa or track polar bears in Alaska so, of course, I got sent to a down-and-dirty campsite in Vermont for a show called “Building Wild.”
As the country prepares to select a new president, it seems fitting that some of the most nominated series are fueled by the art, strategy and down-and-dirty combat of politics.
The thriller “Monkey Man” opens on a tender scene and a nod to the power of storytelling, only to quickly get down to down-and-dirty, action-movie business with a flurry of hard blows and faster edits.
Further hints of Burroughs are daubed here and there throughout the twin McCarthy books: the unseemly characters populating a down-and-dirty underworld, dubious detectives and layers of pulp noir, mental wards and medical jargon, an unreliable plot — plenty of elements feel like they would be right at home in the infamous Beat writer's Interzone junkscape.
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