quick-and-dirty

English dictionary entry

Meanings

adj
  1. Done or constructed in a hasty, approximate, temporarily adequate manner, but not exact, fully formed, or reliable for a long period of time.
noun
  1. An inexpensive, inelegant eatery; a greasy spoon.
  2. A quick, temporary fix, estimate, or the like.

Pronunciation

En-au-quick-and-dirty.ogg

Word forms

quick-and-dirty more quick-and-dirty most quick-and-dirty quick and dirty quick-and-dirties

Etymology

The Oxford English Dictionary shows the first usage of this phrase in 1896 in the Boston Globe to describe a place to eat. The first use meaning "slipshod" was from 1939 in the gun-slinging, American Western fiction paperback, "Bounty Guns" by Luke Short.

Synonyms

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.