Word.ws English Dictionary

girns

girns is the third-person singular simple present indicative of girn.

Meaning of girn

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
  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.

See all 4 meanings of girn

Questions about girns

What is girns the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Girns is the third-person singular simple present indicative of girn.

Words near girns in the dictionary

  1. girned
  2. girner
  3. girners
  4. girning
  5. girnings
  6. girns
  7. giro
  8. Giro d'Italia
  9. girocheque
  10. girocheques
  11. Girod

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: girns (page history and authors); 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.

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