Word.ws English Dictionary

gruffy

gruffy adjective: rough or surly.

Adjective

gruffy (comparative gruffier, superlative gruffiest)

  1. (usually, speech) Rough or surly.
    • “Hey, bub,” a gruffy looking man stood over him. “You're lookin' for that kid ain't ya?”2010, Johnathon M. Creech, Legends Of Myrthia:Shards of the Kaynara, page 145
  2. Low and throaty; hoarse.
    • A gruffy, almost sleep sounding voice answered the phone.2018, J.E.K. Roberts-Thomas, A Married Life, page 37

Forms of gruffy

comparativegruffier
superlativegruffiest

Origin of gruffy

From gruff + -y.

Words formed from gruffy

Words that rhyme with gruffy

3 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about gruffy

What does gruffy mean?
Gruffy means rough or surly.
What part of speech is gruffy?
Gruffy is an adjective.

Words near gruffy in the dictionary

  1. gruffish
  2. gruffly
  3. gruffness
  4. gruffnesses
  5. gruffs
  6. gruffy
  7. gruft
  8. grufted
  9. gruftier
  10. gruftiest
  11. grufty

Source and license

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