Word.ws English Dictionary

Gretna Green

Gretna Green proper noun: a village on the border between England and Scotland (in Dumfries and Galloway council area just inside Scotland), famous for easy marriages (OS grid ref NY3168).

Proper noun

Gretna Green

  1. A village on the border between England and Scotland (in Dumfries and Galloway council area just inside Scotland), famous for easy marriages (OS grid ref NY3168).
    • The Clown is a London cockney, with a prodigious eye to his own comfort and muffins,—a Lord Mayor's fool, who loved "everything that was good;" and Columbine is the boarding-school girl, ripe for running away with, and making a dance of it all the way from Chelsea to Gretna Green.1845, Leigh Hunt, The Indicator: a Miscellany for the Fields and the Fireside, page 213

Noun

Gretna Green (plural Gretna Greens)

  1. Any town with liberal marriage laws, a place where couples elope.
    • It was nothing more nor less than to convert all places licensed under the Toleration Act into Gretna Greens, where persons of all persuasions might go and make irregular marriages.1823 June 12, Lord Redesdale, “Dissenters' marriages”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Lords), page 16
    • Federal Writers Project (1952), West Virginia: A Guide to the Mountain State, →ISBN, page 485: “A town of narrow streets and smoke-begrimed old buildings, Wellsburg thrived as a Gretna Green for many years”

Adjective

Gretna Green (not comparable)

  1. carried out quickly and secretively in a jurisdiction that is not the bride or groom's own. (of a marriage)
    • There has been a Gretna Green marriage in Brockville. Miss Mary Ann Hall and a Mr. Underwood ran away to Ogdensburg (New York) and got married last week and was back again the night before last.1833, R. Longley, private correspondence quoted in Peter Ward, Courtship, Love, and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century English Canada, page 110
    • He made a very pleasant morning's sport, especially as it was my first conquest, and entitled me to all the privileges of a Floridian. At this my favorite place of resort, a Gretna-Green affair happened, just before my arrival, and was witnessed by a companion who was often with me1836 August, 'Orson', "East Florida—Alligators—the Seminoles, etc.", The Knickerbocker Magazine, page 150

Forms of Gretna Green

pluralGretna Greens

Origin of Gretna Green

"Green at the gravelly hill", from Old English greot (“grit”) and hoh (“hill”).

Questions about Gretna Green

What does Gretna Green mean?
Gretna Green means a village on the border between England and Scotland (in Dumfries and Galloway council area just inside Scotland), famous for easy marriages (OS grid ref NY3168).
What part of speech is Gretna Green?
Gretna Green can be a proper noun, a noun or an adjective.

Words near Gretna Green in the dictionary

  1. Gretel
  2. greter
  3. Grether
  4. Grethers
  5. Gretna
  6. Gretna Green
  7. Gretna Greens
  8. Gretta
  9. Gretton
  10. Gretz
  11. Gretzes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Gretna Green (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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