gricer
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "The train was stuffed full of journalists and gricers, as railway enthusiasts are pejoratively termed. Some of the gricers, earnest, fresh-faced young men, almost to a person, who cut their milk teeth on Hornby trains, had booked on this train two years ago."
- "Such an eclectic mix of rolling stock also created the movement of standing train spotters and inspired the early gricers, those enthusiastic train photographers."
- "This Delphi of railway enthusiasm, this holy grail for gricers, has a lure at least as strong as its grander contemporaries such as the Settle & Carlisle or West Highland Line, which were saved from closure and are still alive today."
- "Betjeman, who was a bit of a gricer, wrote: "I know of no greater pleasure for elevenses in London than to sit in this tea place and watch the trains arrive and depart.""
Etymology
Uncertain. The suggestion that it is a humorous representation of a “received” pronunciation of grouser (“one who hunts or shoots grouse”), or from the humorous plural grice of grouse + -er, based on the supposed resemblance of train spotting to grouse-shooting, has been reported several times independently, among other speculative etymologies.