Grig
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A dwarf. obsolete
- 2 Heath or heather. UK, dialectal
"The further method of tillage pursued, was to make fallows; and if the season permitted, so that the ground could be cleared and burnt off, to destroy the grig or heath, […]"
- 3 A cricket or grasshopper.
"The black rooks will fly away, my son, and you'll come back as brown as a berry, and as merry as a grig."
- 4 A small or young eel.
"[W]e assembled at one o'clock, at two sat down to dinner, consisting of capital stewed grigs, a dish Mrs Burt was famous for dressing, a large joint of roast or boiled meat, with proper vegetables and a good-sized pudding or pie […] ."
- 5 Specifically, the broad-nosed eel. See glut.
- 1 To irritate or annoy. transitive
Example
More examples"The black rooks will fly away, my son, and you'll come back as brown as a berry, and as merry as a grig."
Etymology
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).
From Welsh grug, Cornish grig.
Borrowed from Irish griog.
Related phrases
More for "grig"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.