get one's hands dirty
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to become involved in something unpleasant or messy
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
trở nên tham gia vào điều gì đó không thoải mái hoặc bẩn
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: to have dirt on one's hands
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
She had to get her hands dirty to fix the leaky pipe
AI-drafted example auto-approved by rule (illustrative, not a corpus attestation)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “get one's hands dirty” mean?
to become involved in something unpleasant or messy Literally: to have dirt on one's hands
Is “get one's hands dirty” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.