Word.ws English Dictionary

grew

UK/ɡɹuː/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/ɡɹʉw/

grew is the simple past of grow.

grew is the past participle of grow.

grew is the alternative form of grue.

Meaning of grow

Verb

grow (third-person singular simple present grows, present participle growing, simple past grew or (dialectal) growed, past participle grown or (dialectal) growed)

  1. (ergative) To become larger, to increase in magnitude.
    • Children grow quickly.
  2. (ergative) To undergo growth; to be present (somewhere).
    • Apples now grow all over the world.
    Synonyms:
    range
  3. (intransitive) To appear or sprout.
    • Leaf buds grew on the trees with the advance of spring.
  4. (intransitive) To develop, to mature.
    • As I grew throughout adolescence, I came to appreciate many things about human nature.
  5. (transitive) To cause or allow something to become bigger, especially to cultivate plants.
    • He grows peppers and squash each summer in his garden.
  6. (copulative) To assume a condition or quality over time.
    • Near-synonyms: become, get, go, turn, come, fall, wax
    Synonyms:
    become, get, go, turn, come, fall, wax

See all 9 meanings of grow

Meaning of grue

Verb

grue (third-person singular simple present grues, present participle gruing or grueing, simple past and past participle grued)

  1. (Scotland, intransitive, archaic except Northern England) To be frightened; also, to shudder with fear; to quake, to tremble.
    • ["]I would have done Mr. Mordaunt's bidding too," he added, relaxing from his note of defiance, into the deferential whining tone with which he cajoled his customers, "if he hadna made use of profane oaths which made my very flesh grue, and caused me, in some sort, to forget myself."1822, [Walter Scott], The Pirate. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., →OCLC, pages 111–112

See all 10 meanings of grue

Proper noun capitalized: Grew

Grew (plural Grews)

  1. A surname.

Forms of grew

Verb
third-person singular presentgrews
present participlegrewing
past participlegrewed
pastgrewed
Proper noun
pluralGrews

Origin of grew

From Middle English grew, from Old English grēow (first and third person past tense of grōwan), from West Germanic *greu, from Northwest Germanic *grerō, from Proto-Germanic *gegrō (first and third person past tense of *grōaną), reduplication of *grōaną.

Variant of Grewe.

Phrases with grew

2 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with grew

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about grew

What does grew mean?
Grew means a surname.
What is grew the simple past of?
Grew is the simple past of grow.
What part of speech is grew?
Grew is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce grew?
Grew is pronounced /ɡɹuː/ (UK).

Words near grew in the dictionary

  1. Grevillian
  2. grevillol
  3. grevious
  4. grevière
  5. grevières
  6. grew
  7. grew a custom
  8. grew a pair
  9. grew a set
  10. grew a tail
  11. grew apart

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grew (page history and authors); Grew (page history and authors); grow (page history and authors); grue (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: en-us-grew.ogg.

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