gritty

Bruce Bennett / Getty Images / Thrillist

Gritty听is the adjective version of grit听and is used to describe things resembling sand or gravel. This sense dates back to the late 1500s.

Its metaphorical sense, for something “coarse,” emerges in the late 19th century. One early example comes from a 1888 New York collection of literary criticism that uses gritty to describe the book Annie Kilburn. A critic describes the book as “perfectly real, if rather grim and gritty, in its portrayal of characters and manners.”

Gritty spread in the 20th century as a common term critics and viewers would use to describe films and TV shows (and later, comic books and video games)听that were especially realistic, raw, harsh, or cynical鈥搒uch as听film noir听or Westerns.

Warner Bros.

A gritty person, meanwhile, has courage and pluck, a sense of the word, a sense that dates back to the mid-1800s.

And, of course, there’s Gritty, the orange, googly-eyed, muppet-like mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers professional hockey team.

It me.

— Gritty (@GrittyNHL)

Gritty debuted on September 24, 2018, and the bizarre mascot gained quick adoration and听internet-fame.听The Flyers’ rival, the Pittsburgh Penguins, mocked Gritty on Twitter upon his unveiling. Gritty did not take this slight lightly.

Sleep with one eye open tonight, bird.

— Gritty (@GrittyNHL)

Thanks to this viral threat (and his unusual appearance), Gritty was an instant meme.听Mere days after his reveal, Gritty was already on the talk show circuit, memorably picking a fight with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.

Stay tuned as Gritty car jacks the zamboni and robs a convenience store

— Douglas Hunter (@DWHauthor)

Gritty memes spread like wildfire, including on Gritty’s own social media accounts.

Goodnight, internet.

— Gritty (@GrittyNHL)

Gritty also caught on with far-left groups in the US. They imagined him as a working-class hero, a champion of the proletariat, ready to brawl for your rights.

Gritty is a worker

— Jacobin (@jacobinmag)

My theory on why Gritty is an aspirational figure for the left rn is that he looks like he's tryna fight.

— Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet)

Just as听Pepe the Frog became a far-right mascot so Gritty became a leftist icon after members of the far-left group Antifa used in a protest banner during President Donald Trump’s visit to Philadelphia in October 2018.

Delaware Liberal

Things got even weirder鈥攅谤, grittier鈥�when, on October 25, 2018, the Philadelphia City Council acknowledged Gritty’s status as a leftist symbol, humorously referring to him as “insurrectionary” and a “non-binary leftist icon” in a somehow-not-made-up Gritty Resolution.

Strange as this all seems, Gritty-mania was really nothing unusual for a year like 2018.