grig
/ɡɹɪɡ/
grig noun: a dwarf.
Noun (1)
grig (plural grigs)
- A dwarf.
- A cricket or grasshopper.
- The black rooks will fly away, my son, and you'll come back as brown as a berry, and as merry as a grig.1926, Hope Mirrlees, chapter 5, in Lud-in-the-Mist
- A small or young eel.
- [W]e assembled at one o'clock, at two sat down to dinner, consisting of capital stewed grigs, a dish Mrs Burt was famous for dressing, a large joint of roast or boiled meat, with proper vegetables and a good-sized pudding or pie […] .1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 41
- Specifically, the broad-nosed eel. See glut.
Noun (2)
grig
- Heath or heather.
- The further method of tillage pursued, was to make fallows; and if the season permitted, so that the ground could be cleared and burnt off, to destroy the grig or heath, […]1791, Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Transactions of the Society of Arts, volume 9, page 80
Verb
grig (third-person singular simple present grigs, present participle grigging, simple past and past participle grigged)
grig meaning in Tamil and Urdu
grig in Tamil
- கிளுவை
grig in Urdu
- جھینگر
Forms of grig
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | grigs |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | grigs |
| present participle | grigging |
| past participle | grigged |
| past | grigged |
Origin of grig
The word is often used in the phrase "merry as a grig". The word is of uncertain origin, though various theories have been suggested, such as a corruption of "merry as a cricket" or "merry as a Greek", as in William Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida: "Then she's a merry Greek indeed." Johnson suggested that the word originally meant "anything below the natural size" (compare Swedish krik and Scots crick).
From Welsh grug, Cornish grig.
Borrowed from Irish griog.
Words formed from grig
Words that rhyme with grig
Questions about grig
- What does grig mean?
- Grig means a dwarf.
- What is grig in Tamil?
- Grig in Tamil is கிளுவை. See Grig meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is grig?
- Grig can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce grig?
- Grig is pronounced /ɡɹɪɡ/.
- What is the plural of grig?
- The plural of grig is grigs.
Words near grig in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: grig (page history and authors); grig (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); grig (Urdu Wiktionary) (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-grig.wav.
Cite this entry: “grig.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grig. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.