quick-and-dirty

adj

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.

Definitions

  1. Done or constructed in a hasty, approximate, temporarily adequate manner, but not exact,…

    Done or constructed in a hasty, approximate, temporarily adequate manner, but not exact, fully formed, or reliable for a long period of time.

    • I can do a quick-and-dirty market analysis in time for the meeting tomorrow.
  2. An inexpensive, inelegant eatery

    An inexpensive, inelegant eatery; a greasy spoon.

  3. A quick, temporary fix, estimate, or the like.

    • The car broke down but we managed to do a quick-and-dirty and were back on the road in fifteen minutes.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for quick-and-dirty. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA