Word.ws English Dictionary

grubble

grubble verb: to feel or grope in the dark.

Verb

grubble (third-person singular simple present grubbles, present participle grubbling, simple past and past participle grubbled)

  1. (ambitransitive, obsolete, rare) To feel or grope in the dark.
    • When all depart, when Complements are loud, / Be sure to mix among the thickest Crowd: / There I will be, and there we cannot miss, / Perhaps to Grubble, or at least to Kiss.1704, John Dryden, Poetical Miscellanies, volume 5, London, translation of Amores by Ovid, page 28
    Synonyms:
    fumble, grabble

Synonyms of grubble

Forms of grubble

third-person singular presentgrubbles
present participlegrubbling
past participlegrubbled
pastgrubbled

Origin of grubble

From grub + -le, frequentative, but compare grabble.

Questions about grubble

What does grubble mean?
Grubble means to feel or grope in the dark.
What part of speech is grubble?
Grubble is a verb.
What is the past tense of grubble?
The past tense of grubble is grubbled.

Words near grubble in the dictionary

  1. grubbing ken
  2. grubbing kens
  3. grubbing out
  4. grubbing up
  5. grubbings
  6. grubble
  7. grubbled
  8. grubbles
  9. grubbling
  10. Grubbs
  11. Grubbs' catalyst

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grubble (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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