Word.ws English Dictionary

grinny

grinny adjective: having or resembling a grin.

Adjective

grinny (comparative more grinny, superlative most grinny)

  1. Having or resembling a grin.
    • a grinny face
    • That cheeky, grinny smile with those twinkly blue eyes2019, Liam Livings, Love on the Dancefloor, page 10

Noun

grinny (plural grinnies)

  1. (Pennsylvania, Western) An eastern chipmunk, Tamias striatus.
    • Reason thus, and if your heart beats till it hurts your ribs as a gray squirrel whisks across the dry leaves or a ‘grinny chipmunk’ waves you a derisive signal with his little flag from a log before your very nose, call yourself ‘fool,’ ‘idiot,’ anything that comes handy.[1898 November, B. W. Mitchell, “A Thanksgiving Deer Hunt in West Virginia”, in Outing, page 143

Forms of grinny

Adjective
comparativemore grinny
superlativemost grinny
Noun
pluralgrinnies
alternative formgrinnie

Origin of grinny

From grin + -y.

The phrase "grinny chipmunk" is first attested in 1898 (see quotation below). Perhaps from Etymology 1 above.

Questions about grinny

What does grinny mean?
Grinny means having or resembling a grin.
What part of speech is grinny?
Grinny can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near grinny in the dictionary

  1. grinning and bearing it
  2. grinning from ear to ear
  3. grinning like a mule eating briars
  4. grinningly
  5. grinnings
  6. grinny
  7. grins
  8. grins and bears it
  9. grins and giggles
  10. grins from ear to ear
  11. grins like a mule eating briars

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grinny (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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