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Gritty comes from grit ("small hard granules"), which in turn derives, via Middle English, from an Old English word for "sand" or "gravel." Grit has been around since before the 12th century, but the first appearance of gritty in print in English was near the end of the 16th century, when it was used in the sense of "resembling or containing small hard granules." Grit entered American slang with the meaning "courage or persistence" in the early 19th century, and gritty followed suit with a corresponding "plucky" sense. By the 19th century's end, gritty was also being used to describe a literary style that was rough and coarse.
Examples of gritty in a Sentence
Clayton Davis, Variety, 16 Sep. 2024
Continuing the story of The Batman also means that The Penguin is stuck making sense of that movie’s ridiculous climax, in which Gotham was flooded and all the gritty realism embodied by a gangster Penguin and serial killer Riddler was overwhelmed by Biblical disaster.
—Christian Holub, EW.com, 12 Sep. 2024
Already inspired by both a comic-book superhero (originally) and a gritty detective noir (in the recent film), HBO‘s eight-episode limited series is both romantic and gloomy, varied and barren.
—Ben Travers, IndieWire, 12 Sep. 2024
Losers of eight of their last nine games, the Chargers ushered in the Jim Harbaugh era with a gritty 22-10 win over the Las Vegas Raiders at SoFi Stadium.
—Thuc Nhi Nguyen, Los Angeles Times, 8 Sep. 2024
See all Example Sentences for gritty 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'gritty.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near gritty
Cite this Entry
“Gritty.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gritty. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
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