Girn

//ɡɜː(ɹ)n// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A vocalization similar to a cat's purring.

    "A different vocalization, a girn, simiular to a cat's purring, was observed in infants reunited with their mothers..."

Verb
  1. 1
    To grimace; to snarl. dialectal

    "At seventy-five or eighty I will be like a child myself, frail and cantankerous, a girning, burdensome old devil."

  2. 2
    To whinge, moan, complain. Northern-England, Scotland

    "And Jim was just girning all the time. I telled him to shut it."

  3. 3
    To make elaborate unnatural and distorted faces as a form of amusement or in a girning competition. intransitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
bemoancomplaingrouchlamentmoanpinch

Example

More examples

"At seventy-five or eighty I will be like a child myself, frail and cantankerous, a girning, burdensome old devil."

Etymology

From Middle English gyrnen, a metathesised form of grinnen, grennen. More at grin.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.