grub

CEFRC2

/ɡɹʌb/

noun · verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    The soft young form of an insect or informal food.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A dirty person.

Examples

  • I can't believe how hard it is to find decent grub around here.

  • I'm going to get some grub and I'll be back.

At a glance

Sits at C2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. An insect, especially a beetle, at an immature stage of its life cycle.

  2. A short, thick man; a dwarf.

verb

Extra meaning

  1. To scavenge or in some way scrounge, typically for food.

More examples

In context

  • to grub up trees, rushes, or sedge

  • John Romane, a short clownish grub, would bear the whole carcase of an ox, yet never tugged with him.

  • "The rice ration's down to nearly damn-all in the kampongs, but we keep finding dumps of grub in the forest."

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The gardener found a fat blank while digging in the soil for planting.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

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 (...