What's the difference between dirty and foul?

Dirty


Definition:

  • (superl.) Defiled with dirt; foul; nasty; filthy; not clean or pure; serving to defile; as, dirty hands; dirty water; a dirty white.
  • (superl.) Sullied; clouded; -- applied to color.
  • (superl.) Sordid; base; groveling; as, a dirty fellow.
  • (superl.) Sleety; gusty; stormy; as, dirty weather.
  • (v. t.) To foul; to make filthy; to soil; as, to dirty the clothes or hands.
  • (v. t.) To tarnish; to sully; to scandalize; -- said of reputation, character, etc.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In platform shoes to emulate Johnson's height, and with the aid of prosthetic earlobes, Cranston becomes the 36th president: he bullies and cajoles, flatters and snarls and barks, tells dirty jokes or glows with idealism as required, and delivers the famous "Johnson treatment" to everyone from Martin Luther King to the racist Alabama governor George Wallace.
  • (2) You won’t read about this in adverts for “feminine hygiene” (because of course having periods makes us dirty).
  • (3) But the president said that the rest of the country had relied for too long on police to do the “dirty work” of containing urban violence and bore responsibility for the violent spectacle in Baltimore.
  • (4) But the other brother did not want to get his hands dirty with the regime and would have nothing.
  • (5) As one source close to the inquiry put it: “There was a hell of a lot of dirty stuff going on.” Two earlier Yard inquiries had failed to investigate the relevant notes in Mulcaire’s logs.
  • (6) Facebook Twitter Pinterest A bus belching smoke in Bogotá Pretty dirty.
  • (7) Source: Reuters Dirty old river If the notion of an Englishman’s castle as his home is being challenged on the Levels, where scores of properties flooded, the bursting of the Thames from its banks a few hundred yards from the royal castle of Windsor has raised the issue to a new height.
  • (8) The most characteristic microscopic features of the ovarian metastases were garland and cribriform growth patterns, intraluminal "dirty" necrosis, segmental destruction of glands, and absence of squamous metaplasia.
  • (9) Everyone has been part of it, regardless of whether you’re a dirty metalhead or a flamboyant pop fan.” • This article was amended on 1 June 2017.
  • (10) When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white... Further - and this is a stroke of his sensitive, pawky genius - he contemplates his momentarily displaced furniture and the nuance of enchanting strangeness: It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy's pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories ...
  • (11) But Gates’s decision to “bump off from art” and live “in the sphere of dirt, the dirty, the stuff that we think is in the ground” was revelatory, leading to invitations to Davos and a TED Talk, where he talked about how he revived a neighborhood with imagination and hard graft .
  • (12) I would like it to always look as fresh as the day I made it, so part of the contract is: if the glass breaks, we mend it; if the tank gets dirty, we clean it; if the shark rots, we find you a new shark."
  • (13) You fight a dirty war with innovations.” Rawat expressed frustration about the pressures faced by his soldiers, required to police their own citizens in an environment the Indian government has described as “warlike”.
  • (14) The results of both tests are compared with those of the in vitro test (with the disinfectant diluted in distilled water, in water of standardized hardness, and in a 0.2% albumin solution), those of the European suspension test under clean and under dirty conditions, and those of four practical tests (the AFNOR test, the DGHM test, the QCT and the QSDT).
  • (15) O'Hagan's LRB piece is no part of an organised dirty tricks campaign.
  • (16) 5) Playing dirty helps win the day Three days before the vote, a panicking no campaign organised a last-ditch rally at the Place du Canada in Montreal.
  • (17) There's dirty politics, dirty money and dirty dealings.
  • (18) "Dreaming only of sleep and a sip of tea, the exhausted, harassed and dirty convict becomes obedient putty in the hands of the administration, which sees us solely as a free work force.
  • (19) Last year in a Radar accessible toilet I discovered a dirty syringe in the bowl.
  • (20) It is dirty and it is cold, he can’t even have a shower.

Foul


Definition:

  • (n.) A bird.
  • (superl.) Covered with, or containing, extraneous matter which is injurious, noxious, offensive, or obstructive; filthy; dirty; not clean; polluted; nasty; defiled; as, a foul cloth; foul hands; a foul chimney; foul air; a ship's bottom is foul when overgrown with barnacles; a gun becomes foul from repeated firing; a well is foul with polluted water.
  • (superl.) Scurrilous; obscene or profane; abusive; as, foul words; foul language.
  • (superl.) Hateful; detestable; shameful; odious; wretched.
  • (superl.) Loathsome; disgusting; as, a foul disease.
  • (superl.) Ugly; homely; poor.
  • (superl.) Not favorable; unpropitious; not fair or advantageous; as, a foul wind; a foul road; cloudy or rainy; stormy; not fair; -- said of the weather, sky, etc.
  • (superl.) Not conformed to the established rules and customs of a game, conflict, test, etc.; unfair; dishonest; dishonorable; cheating; as, foul play.
  • (superl.) Having freedom of motion interfered with by collision or entanglement; entangled; -- opposed to clear; as, a rope or cable may get foul while paying it out.
  • (v. t.) To make filthy; to defile; to daub; to dirty; to soil; as, to foul the face or hands with mire.
  • (v. t.) To incrust (the bore of a gun) with burnt powder in the process of firing.
  • (v. t.) To cover (a ship's bottom) with anything that impered its sailing; as, a bottom fouled with barnacles.
  • (v. t.) To entangle, so as to impede motion; as, to foul a rope or cable in paying it out; to come into collision with; as, one boat fouled the other in a race.
  • (v. i.) To become clogged with burnt powder in the process of firing, as a gun.
  • (v. i.) To become entagled, as ropes; to come into collision with something; as, the two boats fouled.
  • (n.) An entanglement; a collision, as in a boat race.
  • (n.) See Foul ball, under Foul, a.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Earlier recognition of foul-smelling mucoid discharge on the IUD tail, or abnormal bleeding, or both, as a sign of early pelvic infection, followed by removal of the IUD and institution of appropriate antibiotic therapy, might prevent the more serious sequelae of pelvic inflammation.
  • (2) I hope this two days off gives him the stimulus.” The omissions left a manager who cherishes control at risk of falling foul of the “law of Murphy” that he had already bemoaned this season.
  • (3) In some ways, the Gandolfini performance that his fans may savour most is his voice work in Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are (2009), the cult screen version of Maurice Sendak 's picture book classic – he voiced Carol, one of the wild things, an untamed, foul-mouthed figure.
  • (4) Sow had a couple of chances and the substitute Emmanuel Emenike drew a sharp last-minute save out of Szczesny but Giroud's penalty, after Kadlec's foul on Walcott, represented Arsenal's emphatic final word.
  • (5) The home team's defence had been undermined by naivety and it was in evidence when Stepanov, already on a yellow card for a foul on McGeady and having been played into trouble, lunged for the ball only to be beaten to it by Keane.
  • (6) 1.56am GMT 49ers 17-13 Seahawks, 2:47, 3rd quarter Andy Lee is hit as he kicks and it's a five yard penalty rather than the personal foul you would get for crushing the punter.
  • (7) Anything that good for you might be expected to smell foul and come in a medicine bottle, but the Mediterranean diet is generally considered to be delicious, except by those who hate olive oil.
  • (8) Both Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain are believed to have fallen foul of the FFP rules with sponsorship deals related to each clubs' owners.
  • (9) Already, opposition parties are crying foul over the draw-down of more than 80% of the national foreign reserves that were set up in 2012.
  • (10) The lecture worked and one of his substitutes, James Ward-Prowse, opened the scoring from the penalty spot in the 56th minute following a reckless foul on Shane Long by Alex Bruce.
  • (11) Apart from that, nothing much to write home about, except that Whelan was lucky to escape a booking when he trod on Olivier Giroud's ankle and Erik Pieters possibly took the rap a few minutes later, picking up a caution for a less obvious foul on the same player.
  • (12) Williams said: "There is no doubt in my mind that you are a paedophile who has for some time harboured sexual and morbid fantasies about young girls, storing on your laptop not only images of pre-pubescent and pubescent girls, but foul pornography of the gross sexual abuse of young children."
  • (13) He's fouled out on the right, and takes the free kick very quickly, taking advantage of a wandering Krol, but the referee deems the kick was not take from the right place, and was probably moving as well.
  • (14) Guardian US environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg looked at the role cities would have to play in reducing emissions: At-risk cities hold solutions to climate change: UN report It is already taking shape as the 21st century urban nightmare: a big storm hits a city like Shanghai, Mumbai, Miami or New York, knocking out power supply and waste treatment plants, washing out entire neighbourhoods and marooning the survivors in a toxic and foul-smelling swamp.
  • (15) Business leaders sometimes fall foul of the regime in autocratic countries such as China, and when they do, they risk having their assets appropriated by the state .
  • (16) The Brazilians could delight in keep-ball thereafter, Benítez pointing to time-wasting tactics and plenty of rolling around at hints of fouls, with frustration eventually bubbling over.
  • (17) That would be strike out it seems, as Napoli foul-tips one into the catcher's mitt, the first strikeout for Matt Moore.
  • (18) Resembling a billhook, with Foule Crag its wickedly curved tip, this final flourish looks daunting but can be skirted to one side, up awkward slabs.
  • (19) 12.17am GMT Cardinals 0 - Red Sox 0, bottom of the 1st Dustin Pedroia hits a long long fly that's hooking hooking... foul.
  • (20) 1.06am GMT Red Sox 0 - Cardinals 0, bottom of the 3rd And Clay faces Lance Lynn to start off the third, and the Superman-character named pitcher works a decent at-bat, working the count to 2-2 and then fouling off the next two pitches and taking ball three to a full count.