Word.ws English Dictionary

organ-grinder

organ-grinder is the alternative spelling of organ grinder.

Meaning of organ grinder

Noun

organ grinder (plural organ grinders)

  1. The player of a barrel organ.
    • There is one beautiful sight in the East End, and only one, and it is the children dancing in the street when the organ-grinder goes his round.1903 October, Jack London, chapter XXIII, in The People of the Abyss, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    barrel organist
  2. (figuratively) The person who is in charge, rather than a lackey or representative; the person truly responsible for another's actions.
    • I want to speak to the organ grinder, not the monkey.

Forms of organ-grinder

pluralorgan-grinders

Questions about organ-grinder

What is organ-grinder the alternative spelling of?
Organ-grinder is the alternative spelling of organ grinder.

Words near organ-grinder in the dictionary

  1. organ system
  2. organ systems
  3. organ tablature
  4. organ transplant
  5. organ transplants
  6. organ-grinder
  7. organ-grinders
  8. organ-on-a-chip
  9. organ-pipe cactus
  10. organ-point
  11. organ-points

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: organ-grinder (page history and authors); organ grinder (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: “organ-grinder.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/organ-grinder. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.