grue

See also: Grue

English

WOTD – 14 May 2009

Pronunciation

• enPR: gro͞o, IPA^(key): /ɡɹuː/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uː
• Homophone: grew

Etymology 1

From Middle English gruen, probably from Middle Low German gruwen or Middle Dutch gruwen (compare Dutch gruwen), both from Proto-Germanic *grūwijaną, perhaps ultimately an imitative derivative of Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰers- (“to bristle”), or instead from *gʰer- (“to rub, stroke, grind”).

Verb

grue (third-person singular simple present grues, present participle gruing or grueing, simple past and past participle grued)

1. (intransitive, archaic except Northern England, Scotland) To be frightened; also, to shudder with fear; to quake, to tremble.
   • 1822, [Walter Scott], The Pirate. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., →OCLC, pages 111–112:

     ["]I would have done Mr. Mordaunt's bidding too," he added, relaxing from his note of defiance, into the deferential whining tone with which he cajoled his customers, "if he hadna made use of profane oaths which made my very flesh grue, and caused me, in some sort, to forget myself."

Translations

shudder — see shudder

Noun

grue (plural grues)

1. (Scotland) A shiver, a shudder.
   • 1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:

     Upon all others the sight of Alison, were it but for a moment, cast a cold grue, not to be remembered without terror.

   • 1964, Geoffrey Jenkins, (title):

     A Grue of Ice

   • 1992, Alasdair Gray, Poor Things, Bloomsbury, published 2002, page 25:

     A cold grue went through me—I was unable to touch such a hand.

Translations

shudder — see shudder

Etymology 2

Back-formation from gruesome.

Noun

grue (uncountable)

1. Any byproduct of a gruesome event, such as gore, viscera, entrails, blood and guts.

   The butcher was covered in the accumulated grue of a hard day's work

   There was grue everywhere after the accident

   • 1958, Samuel Youd, writing as John Christopher, The Caves of Night:

     'I've told you - it wasn't much. He tried to kiss me.' She smiled slightly. 'Just after he had shown me the family skeletons.' / 'What a lovely bit of grue!'

   • 1990, John DeChancie, Castle War!

     Incarnadine had to be quick with the sword. Huge wings flapped in time with explosions of grue, and the stink of burnt flesh and feathers filled the air.

   • 1996, Linda Badley, Writing Horror and the Body [2]

     Carrie is Cinderella in the body language of menstrual blood and raging hormones. King’s adolescent joy in grimaces and groans, the Mad magazine humor, and the staple of “grue” hardly need mentioning.

   • 2002, Carole Nelson Douglas, Chapel Noir [3]

     “[...] She is quite agreeable to gruesome ghost stories, but appalled by the lust for life.” / “I admit that I am surprised by how well she handles sheer grue, better than I.”

   • 2004, Talbot Mundy, Guns of the Gods [4]

     “This is the grue,” said Dick, holding his lantern high. / Its light fell on a circle of skeletons, all perfect, each with its head toward a brass bowl in the center.

Etymology 3

Probably from gruesome; first used in Jack Vance's Dying Earth universe in the 1940s, but popularized by the text-based computer game Zork in 1980.

Noun

grue (plural grues)

1. A fictional man-eating predator that dwells in the dark.
   • 1981, Byte, volume 6:

     I managed to get into the house through the front once, but I was plunged into darkness and eaten by a monster called a grue.

   • 2009, Jas, “Hazadous ^[sic] Australian animals the GRUE.... your guide”, in rec.travel.australia+nz (Usenet):

     To find a grue, turn off the light at night, or go for a walk in a dark place (but carry a flashlight with you).

   • 2004, M.D. Dollahite, “How would you imagine a grue?”, in rec.games.int-fiction (Usenet):

     Incidentally, the best official text description I know of is in Sorcerer, when you actually become a grue and visit a grue colony. IIRC, even that description is vague, but does cannonize^[sic] that they are large four-legged reptiles.

Etymology 4

Blend of green +‎ blue. The philosophy sense was coined by American philosopher Nelson Goodman in 1955 to illustrate concepts in the philosophy of science. The linguistic sense was coined by American linguist Paul Kay in 1975 as a translation from languages such as Welsh that have a basic cover term that covers both the hues called "green" and "blue" in English.

Adjective

grue (not comparable)

1. (philosophy) Of an object, green when first observed before a specified time or blue when first observed after that time.
   • 1965, Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction and Forecast:

     The grue property is defined as: x is grue if and only if x is green and is observed before the year 2000, or x is blue and is not observed before the year 2000.

   • 2007, Michael Clark, Paradoxes from A to Z:

     The unexamined emeralds cannot be both green and grue, since if they are grue and unexamined they are blue.

3. (linguistics) Of a single color inclusive of both green and blue as different shades, used in translations from languages such as Old Welsh and Old Chinese that did not always distinguish between green and blue.

Coordinate terms

• (philosophy): bleen

Derived terms

• grue jay

Translations

philosophy: of an object that is first green, then blue

• Dutch: bloen
• French: blert (fr)
• German: blün (de)
• Greek: πρασινογάλαζος (el) m (prasinogálazos)
• Hmong:

  White Hmong: xiav

• Japanese: グルー
• Portuguese: verzul, verul

linguistics: green or blue in languages that do not distinguish the two colors

• Chambeali: 𑚝𑚯𑚥𑚭 (nīlā)
• Chinali: 𑚝𑚯𑚥𑚭 (nīlā)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 青 (zh)

• Dutch: bloen
• Egyptian: (wꜣḏ)
• French: blert (fr)
• German: blün (de)
• Greek: πρασινογάλαζος (el) m (prasinogálazos), γαλαζοπράσινος (el) m (galazoprásinos)
• Guarani:

  Paraguayan Guarani: ^{(please verify)} hovy

• Hmong:

  White Hmong: xiav

• Japanese: 青い (ja) (aoi)
• Kaingang: tánh
• Korean: 푸르다 (ko) (pureuda)
• Ladakhi: སྔོན་པོ (sngon po)
• Lakota: tȟó
• Māori: namu
• Mopan Maya: yaʼax
• Ndebele:

  Northern Ndebele: -luhlaza

• Old Tupi: obý
• Portuguese: verzul, verul
• Russian: зи́ний m (zínij)
• Spanish: verdiazul, azul verde
• Tahitian: ninamu
• Thai: เขียว (th) (kǐao)
• Tibetan:

  Classical Tibetan: སྔོན་པོ (sngon po)

• Tswana: tala
• Vietnamese: xanh (vi)
• Welsh: glas (cy)
• Xhosa: -luhlaza
• Ye'kwana: seene
• Zulu: -luhlaza

translations to be checked

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 綠藍 / 绿蓝

Noun

grue (uncountable)

1. (philosophy) The property of being green when first observed before a specified time or blue when first observed after that time.
   • 1994, Rita Nolan, “Discursive Practices”, in Cognitive Practices: Human Language and Human Knowledge, Oxford, Oxfordshire; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, →ISBN, note 1, page 155:

     [T]he color grue would change in color. Colors do not do this; so ‘grue’ cannot be a color term.

   • 2001, Bruce Kuklick, “Conclusion”, in A History of Philosophy in America, 1720–2000, Oxford, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 283:

     Philosophers made their points with thought experiments—[…] the color grue; […]

   • 2001, Robert C. Pinto, “Inductive inferences and Goodman’s paradox”, in Argument, Inference and Dialectic: Collected Papers on Informal Logic (Argumentation Library; 4), Dordrecht; Norwell, Mass.: Kluwer Academic Publishers, →ISBN, chapter 9 (Logical form and the link between premisses and conclusion), footnote 38, page 92:

     We believe that among emeralds – perhaps among precious stones generally – whether something has the “color” grue is affected by discovery date, but whether it has the color green is not affected by discovery date.

2. (linguistics) A single color inclusive of both green and blue as different shades, used in translations from languages such as Old Welsh and Old Chinese that did not always distinguish between green and blue.
   • 1978 September, Paul Kay, Chad K. McDaniel, “The Linguistic Significance of the Meanings of Basic Color Terms”, in Language, volume 54, number 3, Washington, D.C.: Linguistic Society of America, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 631:

     Grue is the last of the composite categories that languages lose; hence its frequency. The transition to Stage V, where all basic color categories are primary, occurs when grue is replaced by its component primaries blue and green.

   • 1985, Don Burgess, Willett Kempton, Robert E. MacLaury, “Tarahumara Color Modifiers: Individual Variation and Evolutionary Change”, in Janet W. D. Dougherty, editor, Directions in Cognitive Anthropology, Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 58:

     Our third hypothesis supposes that grue is based primarily on green but includes blues at lower membership. This hypothesis, the “skewed” grue, is illustrated in Figure 3d.

   • 1996 August 11, Jim Radeline, “Race theories all wrong”, in The Truth, 107th year, number 224, Elkhart, Ind.: Truth Publishing Co., →OCLC, page A6, column 6:

     Well, as it turns out, there are a handful of cultures that see green and blue as shadings of one color: grue.

See also

• aquamarine
• bleen
• blue-green
• cyan
• turquoise

Etymology 5

Noun

grue (uncountable)

1. (slang) Nutraloaf, a bland mixture of foods served in prisons.

Anagrams

• Guer., Ruge, geru, regu, urge

French

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂-

Proto-Indo-European *-ōws

Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂ōwsder.

Proto-Indo-European *-usinflu.

Proto-Indo-European *gérh₂us ~ *gr̥h₂éws

Proto-Italic *grūs

Latin grūs, gruemder.

Late Latin grua

French grue

Inherited from Late Latin grua, from Latin gruem. This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term. Particularly: “Missing stages between Latin and modern French.”

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡʁy/

• Audio:

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• Audio (Switzerland (Valais)):

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• Audio (France (Vosges)):

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• Audio (France (Vosges)):

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• Audio (France (Lyon)):

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• Audio (France (Somain)):

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Noun

grue f (plural grues)

1. crane (bird)
   • (Can we date this quote?), Phaedrus, translated by Levasseur and J. Chenu, Fables, sourced from [5]:

     La Grue se laisse enfin persuader par ses serments

     At length, on his taking an oath, a Crane was prevailed on

2. crane (machine)
3. (colloquial) prostitute, hooker

Derived terms

• faire le pied de grue
• grue de Sibérie
• grue royale
• gruon
• gruter
• grutier

Descendants

• → Portuguese: grua

Further reading

• “grue”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

Anagrams

• urge, urgé

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈɡru.ɛ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈɡruː.e]

Noun

grue

1. ablative singular of grūs and gruis

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology 1

From Middle Low German [Term?], related to gruve (“mine”) and grav (“grave”).

Noun

grue f or m (definite singular grua or gruen, indefinite plural gruer, definite plural gruene)

1. fireplace

Synonyms

• ildsted

Etymology 2

From Low German gruwen.

Verb

grue (present tense gruer, simple past grua or gruet or grudde, past participle grua or gruet or grudd)

1. To be queasy or nervous in anticipation of something.

   Han gruet for morgendagen.

   He was queasy about the following day.

   Han grudde seg til tannlegen.

   He was queasy about [the coming visit to] the dentist.

Usage notes

Can be used electively with the reflexive pronoun seg.

References

• “grue” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology

From Middle Low German [Term?], related to gruve (“mine”) and grav (“grave”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /²ɡrʉːə/

Noun

grue f (definite singular grua, indefinite plural gruer, definite plural gruene)

1. an open brick fireplace, a hearth

References

• “grue” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Yola

Alternative forms

• griue

Etymology

In North English, it means riches.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡrjuː/

Noun

grue

1. wealth, greed

References

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 43