Word.ws English Dictionary

grep

/ɡɹɛp/

grep proper noun: a program which selects lines in a file which match a given pattern.

Proper noun

grep

  1. A program which selects lines in a file which match a given pattern.

Verb

grep (third-person singular simple present greps, present participle grepping, simple past and past participle grepped)

  1. To use a program such as grep to search in a file.
    • You can't grep dead trees.
    • Running netstat and grepping for sshd will give a similar output to this: […]2019, Kamesh Ganesan, Rithin Skaria, Frederik Vos, Hands-On Linux Administration on Azure […] , 2nd edition, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 293
  2. (broadly) To search anything (perhaps a paper document by eye).

Forms of grep

third-person singular presentgreps
present participlegrepping
past participlegrepped
pastgrepped

Origin of grep

From an idiomatic command sequence in the qed and ed text editors: ‘g/re/p’, meaning: globally search for a regular expression and print.

Words formed from grep

Words that rhyme with grep

9 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about grep

What does grep mean?
Grep means a program which selects lines in a file which match a given pattern.
What part of speech is grep?
Grep can be a proper noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce grep?
Grep is pronounced /ɡɹɛp/ (UK).

Words near grep in the dictionary

  1. grenz ray
  2. grenz rays
  3. Grenzer
  4. Grenzers
  5. Grenzes
  6. grep
  7. grepafloxacin
  8. greppable
  9. grepped
  10. grepping
  11. greps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grep (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-grep.wav.

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