girn

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English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Metathesized form of grin.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɡɜː(ɹ)n/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)

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, published 2009, page 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, Richard J. Davidson, editor, Handbook of Affective Sciences, Oxford: University Press, page 569:
      A different vocalization, a girn, simiular to a cat's purring, was observed in infants reunited with their mothers...

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