grub
Plural: grubs
Noun
- informal terms for a meal
- a soft thick wormlike larva of certain beetles and other insects
- An insect at an immature stage of its life cycle.
- Food.
- A dirty person.
- A despicable person; a lowlife.
- A short, thick man; a dwarf.
Verb
Verb Forms: grubbed, grubbing, grubs
- To dig or search laboriously; to forage.
- ask for and get free; be a parasite
- search about busily
- To scavenge or in some way scrounge, typically for food.
- To dig; to dig up by the roots; to root out by digging; often followed by up.
- To supply with food.
- To eat.
Examples
- He had to GRUB through his mental dictionary for a valid word.
- pub grub
- to grub up trees, rushes, or sedge
Origin / 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”).
Synonyms
bum, cadge, chow, chuck, eats, mooch, sponge, aliment, bait, belly-timber, comestibles, cuisine, eatables, edibles, feed, fodder, food, foodstuffs, grub, kai, larva, meals, meat, munchable, nibbles, nosebag, nosh, nourishment, om nom nom, provender, provisions, rations, scran, stodge, sustenance, tiffin, tuck, tucker, viands, victuals, vittles
Scrabble Score: 7
grub: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordgrub: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
grub: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary