Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To complain.
- intransitive verb To snarl or grimace.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To grin; snarl.
- To entrap or ensnare by, or as if by, a girn.
- noun A trap or snare for catching animals, birds, etc.: also used figuratively.
- noun A grin.
- noun A yawn.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb obsolete To grin.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb dialectal To
grimace ; tosnarl . - verb Scotland To
whinge ,moan ,complain . - verb intransitive To make
elaborate unnatural anddistorted faces as a form ofamusement or in agirning competition .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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To wit: "And yet," says he, all chapfallen, "I fear me he will find occasion to clatter at my lady's ear, and mow and girn for his cracked pate to move her pity - and seest thou, father, it will look ill for me, a tenant oppressed crying Justice! and I can do nowt for him, wanting power at hand, and but the bailiff."
Book 9: The Candlemass Road eddvick 2008
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And then they stretch out their faces, and make mouths, and girn at me, and whichever way
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Our board was full of words like larum and girn and ghat and revet.
VANISHING ACTS JODI PICOULT 2005
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Our board was full of words like larum and girn and ghat and revet.
VANISHING ACTS JODI PICOULT 2005
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Our board was full of words like larum and girn and ghat and revet.
Vanishing Acts Picoult, Jodi, 1966- 2005
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Our board was full of words like larum and girn and ghat and revet.
VANISHING ACTS JODI PICOULT 2005
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Edinburgh, of course, was full of them, just as it was full of hills, biting winds, and people who liked to girn about things like hills and stairs and the wind ...
Strip Jack Rankin, Ian, 1960- 1992
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"That's some o 'Robbie Boath's wark," he says in laich till himsel ', wi' an awfu 'girn on his face.
My Man Sandy J. B. Salmond
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Contemporaries_: "Hunt has behaved like a hyena to Byron, whom he has dug up to girn and howl over him in the same breath."
Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature Margaret Ball
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There was a girn in it, as if she had learned to expect contradiction and disregard as the habitual response to all her remarks, and at the back of that a terror, far more dignified than the protest to which it gave birth, at the dreadful things she knew would happen because she was disregarded, and a small, weak, guilty sense that she had not made her protest loudly and, perhaps, cleverly enough.
The Judge Rebecca West 1937
tbtabby commented on the word girn
Verb: To bear one's teeth in anger or sadness.
January 26, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word girn
"Really, it was no concern of hers that Mr Cowper's relatives were girning yet again over the cost of his upkeep; it was one thing for a man to have a lackey — and Sam Roberts was an excellent servant — but it was piling Ossa on Pelion for them to learn that he also had a half-orphan boy attending on him."
--The Winner of Sorrow by Brian Lynch, p 85
July 12, 2009
yarb commented on the word girn
Her voice changed, and he perceived that she was making use of the strange power to carry on disputes with the dead which is possessed by widows. The tone was a complete reconstruction of her marriage. There was a girn in it, as if she had learned to expect contradiction and disregard as the habitual response to all her remarks...
- Rebecca West, The Judge
July 17, 2009