Definitions

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

  • transitive & intransitive verb To make or become gray.
  • noun The color of a grizzled animal.
  • noun A grizzled animal.
  • noun Archaic Gray hair.
  • adjective Gray.
  • adjective Grizzled.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Gray; a gray color; a mixture of white and black.
  • noun A species of wig.
  • noun An old or gray-haired person.
  • Grizzly; gray.
  • To grow gray or grizzly; become gray-haired.
  • To laugh or grin; show the teeth like a dog; snarl.
  • To grumble; complain; whine; fret.
  • noun In brickmaking, a badly burned second-quality brick of a grayish color.

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

  • verb To make or become grizzly, or grayish.
  • verb Prov. Eng. To worry; to fret; to bother; grumble.
  • noun Gray; a gray color; a mixture of white and black.

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

  • noun A dark grey colour.
  • noun Grey hair.
  • noun A grey wig.
  • adjective Of a grey colour.
  • verb To make or become grey.
  • verb UK, slang To whinge or whine.

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

  • noun a grey wig
  • verb be in a huff; be silent or sullen
  • verb complain whiningly

Etymologies

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

[From Middle English grisel, gray, from Old French, diminutive of gris, gray; see grisaille.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old French grisel, from gris

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From English West Country dialect.

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Examples

  • He looks far younger and, even with grizzle around the mouth, is incomparably better looking than the paunchy Officer Peterson of the puffy eyelids.

    A Story of Two Wives Dorothy Rabinowitz 2012

  • It's the perfect combination of pig fat, grizzle, cholesterol, and jalapeno peppers.

    Mike Gellman: The Shart Heard Round the World Mike Gellman 2010

  • 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.

    Michael Jones: Cowboys and Aliens Michael Jones 2011

  • 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.

    Free Coldplay CD 2009

  • 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.

    Michael Jones: Cowboys and Aliens Michael Jones 2011

  • 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.

    Andy Gray and Richard Keys convicted on sound evidence | Barney Ronay 2011

  • 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.

    A DAY AT THE FUR AUCTION • by Stephen Taylor 2009

  • 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.

    A DAY AT THE FUR AUCTION • by Stephen Taylor 2009

  • Here are some of the things I hate: Water bugs, poison ivy, bullies, fishy-tasting salmon, scaffolding, grizzle, Adam Sandler movies and math.

    Making Math Fun (Seriously) Ralph Gardner 2011

  • 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.

    Michael Jones: Cowboys and Aliens Michael Jones 2011

Comments

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  • 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

    November 27, 2008

  • I frequently grizzle.

    I mean, being a bear and all.

    November 28, 2008

  • Feeling huffy, are you?

    December 1, 2008

  • *is silent*

    December 2, 2008

  • Hmph.

    December 2, 2008

  • No, she's just wearing a grey wig.

    December 2, 2008

  • Oh, right. That 18th-century job thing. Probably a powdered wig.

    December 2, 2008

  • 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.

    December 2, 2008

  • Your hair? And here I thought it was fur. *confused*

    December 2, 2008

  • Hair, fur, whatever.

    *grizzles*

    December 3, 2008

  • Grump.

    December 3, 2008

  • Are you complaining whiningly?

    December 3, 2008

  • No; I am calling you a cranky complaining person.

    December 3, 2008

  • Damn! Mozart farted at the bishop again.

    December 3, 2008

  • *grizzling*

    December 3, 2008

  • Reading this page led me to look up queue, which lead me to the Wikipedia page, which was fascinating. Thank you!

    December 4, 2008

  • 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."

    December 4, 2008

  • 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.

    December 4, 2008

  • "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

    March 27, 2010

  • "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

    January 10, 2013