Word.ws English Dictionary

grockle

grockle noun: a tourist from elsewhere in the country.

Noun

grockle (plural grockles)

  1. (UK, slang, various parts of the West Country) A tourist from elsewhere in the country
    • The grockles were not well served on the Marina of late.2009, Guy Adams, chapter 1, in Torchwood: The House that Jack Built

Forms of grockle

pluralgrockles
alternative formgrockel

Origin of grockle

The origin of the word is uncertain. A derivation has been suggested from the eponymous dragon-like creature in the obsolete The Dandy comic strip "Jimmy and his Grockle", based on an earlier strip, "Jimmy Johnson's Grockle", in The Rover comic in the 1920s, somehow leading to use in the present sense in the movie The System (1964). It is doubtful that the word's use in the West of England goes back farther than that. Eric Partridge's A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English also refers to the film The System but suggests another derivation, that holiday visitors in Torbay were compared to little clowns, and Grock (1880–1959) was a famous clown at the time. A more straightforward derivation is 'grackle' an old term for the jackdaw, from the Latin graculus. It is apposite when considering large numbers of visitors noisily flocking to their holiday destinations.

Words formed from grockle

  • grockle art
  • pictures for selling to grockles
  • grockle bait
  • cheap arcades
  • grockle box and grockle shell
  • caravan
  • grockle can
  • a tourist bus
  • grockle catcher
  • an easy to reach beach
  • beauty spot which acts to stop tourists finding other local spots
  • grockle fodder
  • fish and chips
  • grockle nest
  • a holiday home
  • second home

Phrases with grockle

Questions about grockle

What does grockle mean?
Grockle means a tourist from elsewhere in the country.
What part of speech is grockle?
Grockle is a noun.
What is the plural of grockle?
The plural of grockle is grockles.

Words near grockle in the dictionary

  1. grock
  2. grocked
  3. grockel
  4. grockels
  5. grocking
  6. grockle
  7. grockle box
  8. grockle boxes
  9. grockle-box
  10. grockle-boxes
  11. grockles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grockle (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: En-au-grockle.ogg.

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