Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To broil on a gridiron.
  • transitive verb To torture or afflict as if by broiling.
  • transitive verb Informal To question relentlessly; cross-examine.
  • transitive verb To mark or emboss with a gridiron.
  • noun A cooking surface of parallel metal bars; a gridiron.
  • noun Food cooked by broiling or grilling.
  • noun An informal restaurant or a room in a restaurant where grilled foods are served.
  • noun A series of marks grilled or embossed on a surface.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A grated utensil for broiling meat, etc., over a fire; a gridiron.
  • noun Faint and short white lines or cross-bars on some flat surfaces of engraving.
  • noun In electricity, the grid of a storage cell.
  • noun Harm.
  • Harsh; rough; severe; cruel.
  • To mark or stamp with a series of parallel lines like a grill; specifically, in line-engraving, to break up (a too flat surface) with short bars of faint white lines sometimes crossed at right angles, as may be seen in some forms of postage-stamps.
  • To broil on or as on a grill or gridiron.
  • To undergo broiling; be in a broil.
  • To make angry; provoke.
  • To terrify; cause to tremble.
  • To tremble; shiver.
  • To snarl; snap.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To broil on a grill or gridiron.
  • transitive verb To torment, as if by broiling.
  • transitive verb To stamp or mark with a grill.
  • intransitive verb To undergo the process of being grilled, or broiled; to broil.
  • noun A gridiron.
  • noun That which is broiled on a gridiron, as meat, fish, etc.
  • noun A figure of crossed bars with interstices, such as those sometimes impressed upon postage stamps.
  • noun A grillroom.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A rack; a grid of wire or a sheet of material with a pattern of holes or slots, usually used to protect something while allowing the passage of air and liquids. Typical uses: to allow air through a fan while preventing fingers or objects from passing; to allow people to talk to somebody, while preventing attack.
  • noun On a vehicle, a slotted cover as above, to protect and hide the radiator, while admitting air to cool it.
  • noun A device comprising a source of radiant heat and a means of holding food near it, to cook it; a barbecue; a griddle.
  • noun colloquial A type of jewelry worn on the front teeth; by extension, the front teeth regarded collectively.
  • verb To cook food on a grill; to barbecue.
  • verb Australia, New Zealand, UK To cook food under the element of a stove or only under the top element of an oven - (US) broil.
  • verb colloquial To interrogate; to question aggressively or harshly.
  • adjective harsh, rough, severe; cruel
  • noun harm
  • verb transitive, Scotland, US To make angry; provoke.
  • verb transitive To terrify; make tremble.
  • verb intransitive To tremble; shiver.
  • verb intransitive, Northern England, Scotland To snarl; snap.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a framework of metal bars used as a partition or a grate
  • verb cook over a grill
  • verb examine thoroughly
  • noun a restaurant where food is cooked on a grill

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French griller, from gril, gridiron, from Old French greille, from Latin crātīcula; see griddle.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

1655, from French gril, from Middle French, from Old French greïl, graïl ("gridiron"), from graïlle ("grate, grating"), from Latin crātīcula ("gridiron"), diminutive of crātis ("hurdle, wickerwork"), from Proto-Indo-European *kor(ə)t-, *krāt- (“to weave, twist, wattle; wicker”). Related to griddle, hurdle.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English gril, grille ("harsh, rough, severe"), from Old English *griell, from Proto-Germanic *grellaz (“angry”), from Proto-Indo-European *gher- (“to rattle, make a noise, grumble”). Cognate with German grell ("harsh, angry"), Danish grel ("shrill, glaring, dazzling").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English grillen ("to anger, provoke"), from Old English grillan, griellan ("to annoy, vex, offend"), from Proto-Germanic *grellanan (“to shout, make angry”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰer- (“to rattle, make a noise, grumble”). Cognate with Dutch grillen ("to shudder, shiver"), Low German vergrellen ("to anger, provoke"), German grollen ("to rumble").

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Examples

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  • In stamp collecting, a pattern of parallel lines (or dots at the points where lines would cross) that form a grid. A grill can describe either the impressed breaks added to stamps as a security measure or a grill-like cancelling device used on various 19th-century issues.

    August 27, 2008

  • Slang for face or mouth (smile). "Aloysius slammed Gandolph in the grill".

    October 15, 2009

  • Also used in one of my most favorite phrases, "to get all up in one's grill."

    October 16, 2009