gruff

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ɡɹʌf/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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• (General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ɡɹɐf/
• (Northern England) IPA^(key): /ɡɹʊf/
• Rhymes: -ʌf

16th century, from Dutch grof and/or Middle Low German grof (both “rough, coarse, rude”), from Old Dutch *grof or Old Saxon *grof, both from Proto-West Germanic *grob, from Proto-Germanic *grubaz (“coarse, rough”), possibly from an earlier *gahrubaz and then related with *hreubaz (“scabby, rough, scrubby”).

Cognate with Saterland Frisian groaf (“rough, coarse, crude”), West Frisian grof (“rough, coarse, crude”), Low German groff (“rough, coarse, crude”), German grob (“rough, coarse, crude”), Swedish grov (“rough, coarse, crude”).

gruff (comparative gruffer, superlative gruffest)

1. having a rough, surly, and harsh demeanor and nature.
2. hoarse-voiced.

   a gruff woman

3. hoarse.

   a gruff voice

gruff (third-person singular simple present gruffs, present participle gruffing, simple past and past participle gruffed)

1. To speak gruffly.
   • 2001, Benny Hinn, He Touched Me: An Autobiography:

     “Who gave you that?” replied my father angrily. “Did you bribe someone?” “No,” I told him. “It was a gift, from some people who really want me to be on this trip.” “Fine,” he gruffed.

gruff (plural gruffs)

1. Alternative spelling of grough (“gully in a moor”).
   • 1888, Recreation: A Monthly Exponent of the Higher Literature, page 228:

     Yorkshire and Derbyshire, where the ordinary sportsman has to go "gruffing," as it is called, to game game, i. e., stealing up the "gruffs" or gullies and undulations in the ground, and trying all the clumps of long old twisted heather and broken bogs. the open places on the moor, and thus driving the birds forward to deep lying bogs and "gruffs"

   • 1903 August 29, Yorkshire Evening Post, page 6, quoted in the English Dialect Dictionary:

     They found Uttley's body on the bottom of the gruff.

   • 1926, Emmuska Orczy, Unravelled Knots, page 386:

     the body was found in a 'gruff' or gully about three-quarters of a mile from the Poacher's Leap.

   • 1935, British Birds: An Illustrated Magazine Devoted to the Birds, page 231:

     They roost in peaty gruffs and drainage channels, and on moorland tracks and sheep- walks,

Perhaps related to Dutch grof (“rough, coarse”).

gruff

1. (British India) Of goods: bulky.
   • 1765, John Zephaniah Holwell, Interesting Historical Events..., page 194:

     articles that usually compose the gruff cargoes of our outward bound shipping.

   • quoted in 1869, James Long, Selections from Unpublished Records of Government... (page 171)

     which by causing a great export of rice enhances the price of labour, and consequently of all other gruff, piece-goods and raw silk

• Henry Yule, A C Burnell (1903) “gruff”, in William Crooke, editor, Hobson-Jobson , London: John Murray, .

Deverbal from gruffa.

gruff n

1. argument, quarrel

• gruff in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• gruff in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• gruff in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)