Word.ws English Dictionary

Oscar the Grouch

Oscar the Grouch proper noun: a cranky, antisocial puppet character who lives in a garbage can, from the children's television show Sesame Street.

oscar the grouch: a cranky, antisocial puppet character who lives in a garbage can, from the children's television...
Image: Press-materals distributed by Gary E. Miller of Carl Byoir, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

Oscar the Grouch

  1. A cranky, antisocial puppet character who lives in a garbage can, from the children's television show Sesame Street.
    • If I'd had a trash can I'd have looked a lot like Oscar the Grouch.1989, Linda Gray Sexton, Points of Light, Harper Mass Market Paperbacks,, →ISBN, page 97
    • The room was equipped with a drum and drumsticks, two large balls, three large building blocks, a stuffed cloth horse, a train large enough to sit on, and a pop-up “Oscar the Grouch” toy. The procedure lasted ten minutes.1989, J. Steven Reznick, Perspectives on Behavioral Inhibition, University of Chicago Press,, →ISBN, page 27

Examples of Oscar the Grouch in a sentence

  • You thought something was funny when Dad donned his Oscar the Grouch suit and hopped in the trash can after the evening news, rope in hand.2002, Jennifer Hanson, “The Real Freshman Handbook”, in A Totally Honest Guide to Life on Campus, Houghton Mifflin Books, page 41:
  • Fran and Ron gave a cursory acknowledgement to Howdy Doody, Oscar the Grouch, and only a brief glace at Dorothy’s ruby-red slippers.2004, Paul McCusker, The Mill House, Zondervan, page 105
  • I notice a pair of Oscar the Grouch flip-flops, standing in the last stall.2003, Laurie Faria Stolarz, Blue Is for Nightmares, Llewellyn Worldwide,, →ISBN, page 82:

Questions about Oscar the Grouch

What does Oscar the Grouch mean?
Oscar the Grouch means a cranky, antisocial puppet character who lives in a garbage can, from the children's television show Sesame Street.
How do you use Oscar the Grouch in a sentence?
You thought something was funny when Dad donned his Oscar the Grouch suit and hopped in the trash can after the evening news, rope in hand.
What part of speech is Oscar the Grouch?
Oscar the Grouch is a proper noun.

Words near Oscar the Grouch in the dictionary

  1. Oscan
  2. Oscans
  3. oscar
  4. Oscar Asche
  5. Oscar bait
  6. Oscar the Grouch
  7. Oscar-baity
  8. Oscared
  9. oscarellid
  10. oscarellids
  11. oscarkempffite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Oscar the Grouch (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: “Oscar the Grouch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oscar_the_grouch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.