grig

English

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 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).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡɹɪɡ/
• Rhymes: -ɪɡ

Noun

grig (plural grigs)

1. A little creature. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
   1. A cricket or grasshopper.
      • 1926, Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist (Ch. 5):

        The black rooks will fly away, my son, and you'll come back as brown as a berry, and as merry as a grig.

   2. An insect in the family , related to the katydids.
   3. Any small eel.
   4. The broad-nosed eel. See glut.
2. (UK, dialect) Heath.
   • 1791, Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Transactions of the Society of Arts (volume 9, page 80)

     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, […]

Verb

grig (third-person singular simple present grigg, present participle ing, simple past and past participle grigged)

1. (transitive) To irritate or annoy.

Anagrams

• Rigg