Word.ws English Dictionary

grievances

/ˈɡɹiː.vən.sɪz/

grievances is the plural of grievance.

Meaning of grievance

Noun

grievance (countable and uncountable, plural grievances)

  1. (countable) Something which causes grief.
  2. (countable) A wrong or hardship suffered, which is the grounds of a complaint.
    • [T]he King is vveary / Of daintie and ſuch picking greeuances, / For he hath found, to end one doubt by death, / Reuiues tvvo greater in the heires of life: […]c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Second Part of Henrie the Fourth, […], quarto edition, London: […] V[alentine] S[immes] for Andrew Wise, and William Aspley, published 1600...
  3. (uncountable) Feelings of being wronged; outrage; resentment, bitterness or anger.
    • The issues of harassment and/or bullying was the top common source of grievance, followed by discipline, and then new working practices.2005, John Gennard, Graham Judge, Employee Relations, →ISBN, page 303
  4. (countable) A complaint or annoyance.
  5. (countable, human resources) A formal complaint, especially in the context of a unionized workplace.
    • If you want the problem fixed, you'll have to file a grievance with the city.
  6. (uncountable) Violation of regulations or objectionable behavior.
    • Indeed I do confess, that many times I have showed myself both less provident and less paiful for the benefit of the commonwealth, tha I should, or might, or intended to do hereafter; and have in many actions more respected the satisfying of my own particular humour, than either justice to some...1652, Sir Robert Cotton, Sir John Hayward, The Histories of the Lives and Raignes of Henry the III. and Henry the IIII Kings of England, page 188

Questions about grievances

What is grievances the plural of?
Grievances is the plural of grievance.
How do you pronounce grievances?
Grievances is pronounced /ˈɡɹiː.vən.sɪz/.

Words near grievances in the dictionary

  1. grievance collector
  2. grievance collectors
  3. grievance studies
  4. grievancer
  5. grievancers
  6. grievances
  7. grievand
  8. grievands
  9. grievant
  10. grievants
  11. grievaunce

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grievances (page history and authors); grievance (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-grievances.ogg.

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