Word.ws English Dictionary

girn

/ɡɜː(ɹ)n/

girn verb: to grimace; to snarl.

Verb

girn (third-person singular simple present girns, present participle girning, simple past and past participle girned)

  1. (dialectal) To grimace; to snarl.
    • The poor lass was sitting bemoaning herself - "Were it nae for thy girning face, I would knock the big, winnow the corn, and grun the meal."1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume II, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 167
    • At seventy-five or eighty I will be like a child myself, frail and cantankerous, a girning, burdensome old devil.1999, Jessica Stirling, The Wind from the Hills, St Martin's Press
  2. (Northern England, Scotland) To whinge, moan, complain.
    • And Jim was just girning all the time. I telled him to shut it.2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin, published 2009, page 107
  3. (intransitive) To make elaborate unnatural and distorted faces as a form of amusement or in a girning competition.

Noun

girn (plural girns)

  1. A vocalization similar to a cat's purring.
    • A different vocalization, a girn, simiular to a cat's purring, was observed in infants reunited with their mothers...2002, Richard J. Davidson, editor, Handbook of Affective Sciences, Oxford: University Press, page 569

Forms of girn

Verb
third-person singular presentgirns
present participlegirning
past participlegirned
pastgirned
alternative formgurn
alternative formgurne
Noun
pluralgirns

Origin of girn

From Middle English gyrnen, a metathesised form of grinnen, grennen. More at grin.

Questions about girn

What does girn mean?
Girn means to grimace; to snarl.
What part of speech is girn?
Girn can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce girn?
Girn is pronounced /ɡɜː(ɹ)n/.
What is the past tense of girn?
The past tense of girn is girned.

Words near girn in the dictionary

  1. Girmas
  2. girmitiya
  3. girmitiyas
  4. girmitya
  5. girmityas
  6. girn
  7. girned
  8. girner
  9. girners
  10. girning
  11. girnings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: girn (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-girn.wav.

Cite this entry: “girn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/girn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.