groak

groak verb: to stare or look fixedly at someone; esp. of a child or dog in anticipation of receiving food.

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Verb

groak (third-person singular simple present groaks, present participle groaking, simple past and past participle groaked)

(typically of domestic animals) To stare or look fixedly at someone; esp. of a child or dog in anticipation of receiving food.
To look at someone with a watchful or suspicious eye.
- Grouk is often used, as denoting the watchfulness of a very niggardly person, who is still afraid that any of his property be given away or carried off.1808, Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL)

Noun

groak (plural groaks)

Someone who waits at meal-times with the expectation of getting something to eat.
A wistful look by a child on any article greatly desired.

Forms of groak

Verb
third-person singular present	groaks
present participle	groaking
past participle	groaked
past	groaked
alternative form	growk
alternative form	groke
Noun
plural	groaks

Origin of groak

Unknown. Adapted into English from the Scots groak, growk with an unchanged meaning; groak in Scotland and growk in Ulster. The earliest recorded English usage of this term is as grouk in 1808 (see sense 2).

Questions about groak

What does groak mean?: Groak means to stare or look fixedly at someone; esp. of a child or dog in anticipation of receiving food.
What part of speech is groak?: Groak can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of groak?: The past tense of groak is groaked.

Words near groak in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: groak (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: 2026-09-02

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