grub
/ɡɹʌb/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.12 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "pub grub"
- ""The rice ration's down to nearly damn-all in the kampongs, but we keep finding dumps of grub in the forest.""
- "John Romane, a short clownish grub, would bear the whole carcase of an ox, yet never tugged with him."
- "to grub up trees, rushes, or sedge"
- "They do not attempt to grub up the root of sin."
- "Yet there was no time to be lost if I was ever to get out alive, and so I groped with my hands against the side of the grave until I made out the bottom edge of the slab, and then fell to grubbing beneath it with my fingers."
Etymology
From Middle English grubben, grobben, from Old English *grubbian, from Proto-West Germanic *grubb-, from Proto-Germanic *grubb- (compare Middle Dutch grobben (“to scrape, scramble, grab”), Old High German grubilōn (“to dig, search”), German grübeln (“to meditate, ponder”)), from Proto-Germanic *grub- (“to dig”) (see *grabaną). The noun sense of "larva" is from Middle English grub, grubbe, grobbe, crubbe and may derive from the notion of "digging insect" from the verb above, or from the uncertainly related Middle English grub (“dwarfish fellow”). Compare West Frisian krobbe (“beetle”). The slang sense of "food" is first recorded 1659, and has been linked with birds eating grubs or with bub (“drink”).