Word.ws English Dictionary

griffe

/ɡɹɪf/

griffe noun: a claw-like ornament at the base of a column.

Noun (1)

griffe (plural griffes)

  1. A claw-like ornament at the base of a column.
    • The primary use of this is to give the column a broader base and to diminish the amount of the cutting away of the solid stone. The griffe, however, is often used for elaborate ornamentation, being carved into vegetable or even animal form.2013, Russell Sturgis, Francis A. Davis, Sturgis' Illustrated Dictionary of Architecture and Building: An Unabridged Reprint of the 1901-2 Edition, Courier Corporation, →ISBN, page 323

Noun (2)

griffe (plural griffes)

  1. (US, dated, dialectal, historical) A person of mixed (black and white) race, especially the offspring of a mulatto (person of mixed black and white ancestry) and a person of fully black ancestry.
    • Saint-Domingue's complex system of racial classification allowed for no fewer than eight “mixed” racial parental combinations that could produce a griffe, as infamously calculated by Moreau.2017, Terry Rey, The Priest and the Prophetess: Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World, Oxford University Press, →ISBN

Forms of griffe

pluralgriffes
alternative formgrif

Origin of griffe

Borrowed from French griffe (“claw”).

From Cajun French (in period American English usage) and from general French griffe (in reference to such people in e.g. Haiti), perhaps from (American) Spanish grifo (supposedly "curly-haired").

Words that rhyme with griffe

28 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about griffe

What does griffe mean?
Griffe means a claw-like ornament at the base of a column.
What part of speech is griffe?
Griffe is a noun.
How do you pronounce griffe?
Griffe is pronounced /ɡɹɪf/.
What is the plural of griffe?
The plural of griffe is griffes.

Words near griffe in the dictionary

  1. grievousnesses
  2. grif
  3. griff
  4. griffaun
  5. griffauns
  6. griffe
  7. Griffee
  8. Griffees
  9. Griffen
  10. griffenflies
  11. griffenfly

Source and license

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