Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Having a soulless devotion to facts and figures; inflexibly utilitarian.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Thomas Gradgrind, a character in Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times.

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Examples

  • It's frightening that people can still come out with that kind of Gradgrindian nonsense.

    Censorship Watch: Harry Potter and the Idiotic Removal fusenumber8 2006

  • It's frightening that people can still come out with that kind of Gradgrindian nonsense.

    Archive 2006-02-01 fusenumber8 2006

  • And this script was a gem of its genre -- lean, clean, and (truth to tell) a lot more dramatic than the novel itself, which is thoroughly Gradgrindian in its pedantic tone and constant sermonettes.

    Hard Times deliasherman 2010

  • And this script was a gem of its genre -- lean, clean, and (truth to tell) a lot more dramatic than the novel itself, which is thoroughly Gradgrindian in its pedantic tone and constant sermonettes.

    Hard Times deliasherman 2010

  • Presumably in the Gradgrindian world of narrow rationality that has made this brand of economics infamous, we will choose our action based on whether the resultant number is positive or negative.

    'Genes in the Food': An Exchange Fuller, Colleen 2001

  • _Imprimis, as concerns the authenticity of these tales perhaps the less debate may be the higher wisdom, if only because this Nicolas de Caen, by common report, was never a Gradgrindian.

    Chivalry James Branch Cabell 1918

  • Imprimis, as concerns the authenticity of these tales perhaps the less debate may be the higher wisdom, if only because this Nicolas de Caen, by common report, was never a Gradgrindian.

    Chivalry James Branch Cabell 1918

  • "If You Could Be Anywhere Right Now," on the other hand, was an opportunity to kick free of the Gradgrindian exactitude demanded of you by the preceding questions and make good on your profile's nascent kinship with the headiest flourishes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

    Slate Magazine Tom Shone 2011

  • It is entirely possible that their Lordships will succeed in voting the measure down, and no doubt the speeches today will be filled with anguished descriptions of those who would otherwise have suffered from the Coalition's Gradgrindian cruelty.

    Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph Telegraph View 2012

  • There are a few derelict works in the centre, all mercifully un-Urban Splashed - but neither the industrial or commercial buildings remotely approach the awesome Gradgrindian brutality you can find in Manchester or Nottingham, while the buildings of the 50s, 60s, 70s and early 80s (irrespective of demolitions) are like nothing else.

    sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy 2009

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