Word.ws English Dictionary

grade grubbing

grade grubbing adjective: engaging in grade grubbing. Also the present participle and gerund of grade grub.

Adjective

grade grubbing (comparative more grade grubbing, superlative most grade grubbing)

  1. (US, derogatory, slang) Engaging in grade grubbing.
    • Today's students are often painted with the generational brush of being grade-grubbing snowflakes, a prejudice accelerated by the 2014 publication of William Deresiewicz's Excellent Sheep.2022 February 22, Joshua Kim, “Higher Education and 'The Generation Myth'”, in inside Higher Ed

Noun

grade grubbing (uncountable)

  1. (US, derogatory, slang) The practice of a student (especially one in college) seeking to improve their academic grades through negotiation, flattery, or persistent argumentation without substantive justification.
    • My grade grubbing was so intense that my Latin teacher called me the "millimeter bandit."2017 July 2, Jay Mathews, “My dream of being valedictorian was tragically unrealized”, in Washington Post
    • Academics report that "grade grubbing" (the practice of university students trying to negotiate better grades) is on the rise. Some tutors put this down to parents overpraising their children, turning them into fully fledged narcissists, who feel so precious, gifted and talented that they can’t...2018 April 1, Barbara Ellen, “Grade grubbers are simply preparing for the real world”, in The Guardian

Also used as

grade grubbing is also the present participle and gerund of grade grub.

Forms of grade grubbing

comparativemore grade grubbing
superlativemost grade grubbing

Questions about grade grubbing

What does grade grubbing mean?
Grade grubbing means engaging in grade grubbing.
What part of speech is grade grubbing?
Grade grubbing can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near grade grubbing in the dictionary

  1. grade four
  2. grade grub
  3. grade grubbed
  4. grade grubber
  5. grade grubbers
  6. grade grubbing
  7. grade grubs
  8. grade inflation
  9. grade line
  10. grade lines
  11. grade nine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grade grubbing (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: “grade grubbing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grade_grubbing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.