grot
grot Lexical Profile
grot Game Scores & Validity
• noun
British Dirt, filth, or unpleasant matter; something that is shabby, inferior, or of very poor quality.
"It took the cleaners an entire afternoon to scrub the accumulated grot off the old kitchen tiles."
A small picturesque cave or cavern, or an artificial recessed structure resembling one (now used chiefly in poetic or literary contexts).
"The mossy grot beside the waterfall offered a cool, shaded retreat from the midday sun."
Word Nuance & Usage
'Grot' has two sharply contrasting registers: in British slang, it is an uncountable noun meaning filth or rubbish (a back-formation from 'grotty'), whereas in archaic or poetic literature, it is a countable noun shortened from 'grotto'.
• Rhymes for grot
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
In its poetic sense of a cave, 'grot' dates to the late 16th century from French 'grotte' and Italian 'grotta' (ultimately from Latin 'crypta'). The modern British slang sense meaning dirt or rubbish emerged in the 1960s as a back-formation from 'grotty', itself a colloquial shortening of 'grotesque'.