girn
English[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Metathesized form of grin.
Verb[edit]
girn (third-person singular simple present girns, present participle girning, simple past and past participle girned)
- (dialectal) To grimace; to snarl.
- 1999, Jessica Stirling, The Wind from the Hills, St Martin's Press.
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At seventy-five or eighty I will be like a child myself, frail and cantankerous, a girning, burdensome old devil.
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- 1999, Jessica Stirling, The Wind from the Hills, St Martin's Press.
- (Scotland, Northern England) To whinge, moan, complain.
- 2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin 2009, p. 107:
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And Jim was just girning all the time. I telled him to shut it.
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- 2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin 2009, p. 107:
- (intransitive) To make elaborate unnatural and distorted faces as a form of amusement or in a girning competition.
Noun[edit]
girn (plural girns)
- A vocalization similar to a cat's purring.
- 2002, edited by Richard J. Davidson, Handbook of Affective Sciences, Oxford University Press, p. 569:
- A different vocalization, a girn, simiular to a cat's purring, was observed in infants reunited with their mothers...
- 2002, edited by Richard J. Davidson, Handbook of Affective Sciences, Oxford University Press, p. 569:
