Word.ws English Dictionary

grub

/ɡɹʌb/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Ireland/ɡɹʊb/

grub noun: an insect, especially a beetle, at an immature stage of its life cycle.

grub: an insect, especially a beetle, at an immature stage of its life cycle
Image: Toby Hudson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

grub (countable and uncountable, plural grubs)

  1. (countable) An insect, especially a beetle, at an immature stage of its life cycle.
    Synonyms:
    larva
  2. (slang, uncountable) Food.
    • pub grub
    • "The rice ration's down to nearly damn-all in the kampongs, but we keep finding dumps of grub in the forest."1958, Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 298
  3. (Australia, slang) A dirty person.
  4. (Australia, slang) A despicable person; a lowlife.
  5. (obsolete) A short, thick man; a dwarf.
    • John Romane, a short clownish grub, would bear the whole carcase of an ox, yet never tugged with him.1609, Richard Carew, The Survey of Cornwall, London: […] S[imon] S[tafford] for Iohn Iaggard, […], →OCLC

Verb

grub (third-person singular simple present grubs, present participle grubbing, simple past and past participle grubbed)

  1. (transitive) To scavenge or in some way scrounge, typically for food.
  2. (ambitransitive) To dig; to dig up by the roots; to root out by digging; often followed by up.
    • to grub up trees, rushes, or sedge
    • They do not attempt to grub up the root of sin.1846, Julius Hare, The Mission of the Comforter
  3. (dated, slang, transitive) To supply with food.
  4. (dated, slang) To eat.
    • “[…] John dear, we must give this little fellow his supper, you know.”
      “Of course we must, my darling.”
      “He has been grubbing and grubbing at school,” said Bella, looking at her father’s hand and lightly slapping it, “till he’s not fit to be seen. O what a grubby child!”1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, “Concerning the Mendicant’s Bride”, in Our Mutual Friend. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1865, →OCLC, 4th book (A Turning), page...

grub meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam

grub in Hindi

grub
पोका pokā

grub in Tamil

பூச்சிக்குடம்பி

grub in Urdu

grub
پوکا pokā

grub in Malayalam

to grub
പരതുക paratuka
More languagesFewer languages
grub in Kannada
ದುಂಬಿಮರಿ, ಅಗೆದು ತೆಗೆ, ಹುಡುಕು, ಮಯ್ಮುರಿದು ದುಡಿ
grub in Punjabi
ਗਰੱਬ
grub in Odia
ଗ୍ରବ୍
grub in Assamese
খোঁচৰা khü̃sora
grub in Arabic
يَرَقَة yaraqa
grub in Malay
lundi, tempayak
grub in Thai
ตัวอ่อน dtuua-ɔ̀ɔn
grub in Vietnamese
ấu trùng

Examples of grub in a sentence

  • He grubbed along on foraged berries and nuts.
  • They are very active beneficial animals feeding on worms, soil grubs, etc., and thus harmless creatures.
  • How ‘foodstagramming’ has changed the way we deal with our grub writes James P.

All 26 example sentences with grub

Synonyms of grub

25 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of grub

Forms of grub

Noun
pluralgrubs
alternative UK (dialectal)grob
Verb
third-person singular presentgrubs
present participlegrubbing
past participlegrubbed
pastgrubbed

Plural of grub: grubs

Origin of grub

From Middle English grubben, grobben, from Old English *grubbian, from Proto-West Germanic *grubb-, from Proto-Germanic *grubb- (compare Middle Dutch grobben (“to scrape, scramble, grab”), Old High German grubilōn (“to dig, search”), German grübeln (“to meditate, ponder”)), from Proto-Germanic *grub- (“to dig”) (see *grabaną). The noun sense of "larva" is from Middle English grub, grubbe, grobbe, crubbe and may derive from the notion of "digging insect" from the verb above, or from the uncertainly related Middle English grub (“dwarfish fellow”). Compare West Frisian krobbe (“beetle”). The slang sense of "food" is first recorded 1659, and has been linked with birds eating grubs or with bub (“drink”).

Words formed from grub

Phrases with grub

Words that rhyme with grub

14 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about grub

What does grub mean?
Grub means an insect, especially a beetle, at an immature stage of its life cycle.
What is grub in Hindi?
Grub in Hindi is पोका (pokā). See Grub meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is grub?
Grub can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce grub?
Grub is pronounced /ɡɹʌb/.
What is the plural of grub?
The plural of grub is grubs.

Words near grub in the dictionary

  1. GRSM
  2. GRSMs
  3. grt
  4. GRU
  5. Grua
  6. grub
  7. grub along
  8. grub and bub
  9. grub hoe
  10. grub hoes
  11. grub hut

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grub (page history and authors); पोका (Hindi) (page history and authors); grub (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); پوکا (Urdu) (page history and authors); പരതുക (Malayalam) (page history and authors); grub (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); grub (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); grub (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); খোঁচৰা (Assamese) (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 ck1 grub.ogg, En-us-grub.ogg.

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