Grunt
noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A short snorting sound, often to show disapproval, or used as a reply when one is reluctant to speak.
"The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over his pipe, put his legs up on the settle that he had to himself."
- 2 medium-sized tropical marine food fishes that utter grunting sounds when caught wordnet
- 3 The snorting cry of a pig.
- 4 the short low gruff noise of the kind made by hogs wordnet
- 5 Any fish of the perciform family Haemulidae.
Show 5 more definitions
- 6 an unskilled or low-ranking soldier or other worker wordnet
- 7 A person who does ordinary and boring work.
- 8 An infantry soldier. US, slang
"The poges stare at the grunts as though the grunts were Hell's Angels at the ballet."
- 9 The amount of power of which a vehicle is capable. slang
"The engine might not possess quite as much grunt as the later 24v six, but it delivers invigorating performance […]"
- 10 A dessert of steamed berries and dough, usually blueberries; blueberry grunt. Canada, US
- 1 To make a grunt or grunts. intransitive
"to grunt and sweat under a weary life"
- 2 issue a grunting, low, animal-like noise wordnet
- 3 To make a grunt or grunts. intransitive
- 4 To break wind; to fart. UK, intransitive, slang
"Who just grunted?"
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"What do you expect from a pig but a grunt."
Etymology
From Middle English grunten, from Old English grunnettan (“to grunt”), from Proto-West Germanic *grunnattjan, from Proto-Germanic *grunnatjaną (“to grunt”), frequentative of Proto-Germanic *grunnōną (“to grunt”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrun- (“to shout”). Cognate with German grunzen (“to grunt”), Danish grynte (“to grunt”). The noun senses are all instances of zero derivation from the verb.
Related phrases
More for "grunt"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.