Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To make or become gray.
- n. The color of a grizzled animal.
- n. A grizzled animal.
- n. Archaic Gray hair.
- adj. Gray.
- adj. Grizzled.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Gray; a gray color; a mixture of white and black.
- n. A species of wig.
- n. An old or gray-haired person.
- Grizzly; gray.
- To grow gray or grizzly; become gray-haired.
- n. In brickmaking, a badly burned second-quality brick of a grayish color.
- To laugh or grin; show the teeth like a dog; snarl.
- To grumble; complain; whine; fret.
Wiktionary
- n. A dark grey colour.
- n. Grey hair.
- n. A grey wig.
- adj. Of a grey colour.
- v. To make or become grey.
- v. UK, slang To whinge or whine.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Gray; a gray color; a mixture of white and black.
- v. To make or become grizzly, or grayish.
- v. Prov. Eng. To worry; to fret; to bother; grumble.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a grey wig
- v. be in a huff; be silent or sullen
- v. complain whiningly
Etymologies
- From English West Country dialect. (Wiktionary)
- From Middle English grisel, gray, from Old French, diminutive of gris, gray; see grisaille. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Far too many occasions of the word “little”; I think “grizzle” should have been “gristle” and there; and the narrative occasionally veered into encyclopedia-speak.”
“Although dutifully gutted and stripped of their fur-bearing skin in the field by the trappers, the remaining bits of rotting flesh and grizzle began to give off a stink as the pelts thawed in boxes on the warehouse floor.”
“Here are some of the things I hate: Water bugs, poison ivy, bullies, fishy-tasting salmon, scaffolding, grizzle, Adam Sandler movies and math.”
“Back beyond even its immediate pre-modern period – what you might call The Andy Gray Years, the dolly bird years – football has always been a sweat-caked man-hole of a place, a realm where men have gone to mope and grizzle and rage and emote a kind of cheek-stinging eau de sexism.”
The Guardian: Andy Gray and Richard Keys convicted on sound evidence | Barney Ronay
“I will further predict that young women, repulsed by the grizzle, will embrace tradition, and demand a clean shave before dancing cheek to cheek with their inamoratos.”
“While Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG whine and grizzle about how they ` re being ‘devastated’ by their corrupt file sharing customers, individual performers and bands are looking to the Net as the medium of delivery in the 21st digital century with Coldplay the latest group to acknowledge cyberspace is where it ` s at.”
“He looks far younger and, even with grizzle around the mouth, is incomparably better looking than the paunchy Officer Peterson of the puffy eyelids.”
“It's the perfect combination of pig fat, grizzle, cholesterol, and jalapeno peppers.”
The Huffington Post: Mike Gellman: The Shart Heard Round the World
“And Bartlette, not to be left out, crawled up on her and began to grizzle for a nurse, pulling at the new black bra, puzzled that it had no milk flap.”
The Huffington Post: Steven Crandell: A is for Amy & Adonis: Double Post -- Chapters I and J
“He's a hard citizen, an old colour sergeant of the war, all scars and grizzle.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘grizzle’.
-
Wig
Wiggery. Even though kalayzich got there first with the list called wigs.
paresseuse, nob-thatcher, rogerian, bob-jerom, gregorian, pigeonwing, pulvil, bagwig, vallancy, tye-wig, Bob, bob-wig and 33 more...
-
Funny Laughter Words
Words that speak humor
humor, laugh, funny, laughter, hilarity, guffaw, chortle, giggle, burst, hilarious, happy, chuckle and 66 more...
-
Phonestheme: GR-, the Bad Mood
Grateful credit to http://reocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9783/phond1.html.
grumble, grump, grumpy, grouch, grouchy, gruff, gripe, grouse, growl, grim, grind, grimace and 1 more...
-
wigs
wig terminology
transformation
4. An artificial head of hair worn by women.
1901 Daily News 12 Jan. 6/7 Buying toupées, or even ‘transformations’, as those wigs are ca...buzzwig, bagwig, bobwig, dalmahoy, gizz, jiz, jasey, jasy, jazy, periwig, perruque, peruke and 54 more...
-
looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
-
If Snoop Dogg made a list
Fo' shizzle my chizzle, here's a lizzle!
sizzle, swizz, swizzle, twizzle, whizz, wrizzle, bedrizzle, bizz, crizzle, dizz, drizzle, hizz and 14 more...
-
Pelage
Words used to describe the color and pattern of mammalian fur.
agouti, brindle, calico, tortoiseshell, roan, bay, bluepoint, claybank, ginger, palomino, cameo, chinchilla and 33 more...
-
Double Z
Words at least five letters long with zz in the middle.
fuzzy, nuzzle, fizzle, puzzle, sizzle, razzle, dazzle, guzzle, dizzy, grizzle, drizzle, muzzle and 5 more...
-
Cloudstreet
From Cloudstreet by Tim Winton. Expect lots of new-to-me words and/or just pleasing words encountered in this book, perhaps mostly Australian slang.
chiack, staggerjuice, thunderbox, patterson's curse, cactus, dreckly, compo, hayburner, mulie, carn, dag, grizzle and 34 more...
-
Zz....
Fuzzy! Fizzy! And lots of pizzazz!
puzzle, pizza, piazza, nuzzle, nozzle, swizzle, frizz, drizzle, dazzle, pizazz, sizzle, mizzenmast and 70 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for grizzle.
knitandpurl "Nobody came in answer to the bell, but she could hear a small child grizzling through the ground-floor window on her left, which was ajar."
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, p 66 Jan 9, 2013
knitandpurl "I'll take the boys.
They're not tall enough, Oriel Lamb says.
Ah, the girls grizzle too much. Drives me mad.
Put on yer shoes or yull be stung. Don't want any cobbler stings. Can't stand your grizzlin."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 26 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition Mar 27, 2010
sionnach Hmmm. Mackay's excellent "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" has a chapter devoted to the influence of politics and religion on men's hair and beard styles. Dec 4, 2008
chained_bear Ptero, those sorts of delightful adventures are the reason I finally created my list "Looking Up Words is Time-Consuming, Dangerous, and Leads to Too Many Lists." Dec 3, 2008
pterodactyl Reading this page led me to look up queue, which lead me to the Wikipedia page, which was fascinating. Thank you! Dec 3, 2008
reesetee *grizzling* Dec 3, 2008
sionnach Damn! Mozart farted at the bishop again. Dec 3, 2008
reesetee No; I am calling you a cranky complaining person. Dec 3, 2008
chained_bear Are you complaining whiningly? Dec 3, 2008
reesetee Grump. Dec 2, 2008
chained_bear Hair, fur, whatever.
*grizzles* Dec 2, 2008
reesetee Your hair? And here I thought it was fur. *confused* Dec 2, 2008
chained_bear White wigs are only for gentry men. Grey are for professionals, such as clergy and lawyers. Brown are for tradespeople, like me, unless they wear their own hair in a queue, as I do. Well... it's more like a tail. Dec 2, 2008
reesetee Oh, right. That 18th-century job thing. Probably a powdered wig. Dec 2, 2008
bilby No, she's just wearing a grey wig. Dec 2, 2008
reesetee Hmph. Dec 1, 2008
chained_bear *is silent* Dec 1, 2008
reesetee Feeling huffy, are you? Dec 1, 2008
chained_bear I frequently grizzle.
I mean, being a bear and all. Nov 28, 2008
yarb His head has grizzled since we saw him last, and a line or two of silver may be seen in the soft brown hair likewise. But his feelings are not in the least changed or oldened, and his love remains as fresh as a man's recollections of boyhood are.
- Thackeray, Vanity Fair, ch. 43 Nov 27, 2008