girn

girn

English

Alternative forms

• gurn
• gurne

Etymology

Metathesized form of grin.

Verb

girn (third-person singular simple present girns, present participle girning, simple past and past participle girned)

1. (dialectal) To grimace; to snarl.
   • 1999, Jessica Stirling, The Wind from the Hills, St Martin's Press.

     At seventy-five or eighty I will be like a child myself, frail and cantankerous, a girning, burdensome old devil.

2. (Scotland, Northern England) To whinge, moan, complain.
   • 2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin 2009, p. 107:

     And Jim was just girning all the time. I telled him to shut it.

3. (intransitive) To make elaborate unnatural and distorted faces as a form of amusement or in a girning competition.

Noun

girn (plural girns)

1. 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...

See also

• gowl

Anagrams

• NGRI, Ring, grin, ring