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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

grig.

A dwarf.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɡɹɪɡ/
  1. A dwarf.

    obsolete
  2. A cricket or grasshopper.

  3. A small or young eel.

  4. Specifically, the broad-nosed eel. See glut.

Where this word comes from

The word is often used in the phrase "merry as a grig". The word is of uncertain origin, though various theories have been suggested, such as a corruption of "merry as a cricket" or "merry as a Greek", as in William Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida: "Then she's a merry Greek indeed." Johnson suggested that the word originally meant "anything below the natural size" (compare Swedish krik and Scots crick).

noun/ɡɹɪɡ/
  1. Heath or heather.

    Shropshire · UK · dialectal
Where this word comes from

From Welsh grug, Cornish grig.

verb/ɡɹɪɡ/
  1. To irritate or annoy.

    Ireland · US
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Irish griog.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.