Word.ws English Dictionary

give someone grey hair

give someone grey hair verb: to give someone great frustration, confusion, or anxiousness.

Verb

give someone grey hair (third-person singular simple present gives someone grey hair, present participle giving someone grey hair, simple past gave someone grey hair, past participle given someone grey hair)

  1. (idiomatic) To give someone great frustration, confusion, or anxiousness.

Synonyms of give someone grey hair

Forms of give someone grey hair

third-person singular presentgives someone grey hair
present participlegiving someone grey hair
pastgave someone grey hair
past participlegiven someone grey hair
alternative formgive someone gray hair

Origin of give someone grey hair

The phrase is influenced by the popular belief that stress can cause the greying of hair (that link wasn't shown to be grounded scientifically until a January 2020 study on stress in mice for the Nature journal).

Questions about give someone grey hair

What does give someone grey hair mean?
Give someone grey hair means to give someone great frustration, confusion, or anxiousness.
What part of speech is give someone grey hair?
Give someone grey hair is a verb.
What is the past tense of give someone grey hair?
The past tense of give someone grey hair is gave someone grey hair.

Words near give someone grey hair in the dictionary

  1. give someone enough rope
  2. give someone enough rope and they'll hang themself
  3. give someone five
  4. give someone goss
  5. give someone gray hair
  6. give someone grey hair
  7. give someone grief
  8. give someone Hail Columbia
  9. give someone Hail, Columbia
  10. give someone hell
  11. give someone Jesse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: give someone grey hair (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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