grunt
/ɡrʌnt
/- Simon on the other hand is in love with cuddly toys, and also anything that chimes or makes a silly noise, especially cows mooing or pigs grunting.
- And you'll not hear a pig grunting or a hen cackling in many farmyards today.
- The large creatures were grunting and groaning, and their large, curved tusks flashed in the moonlight.
- I mentally grunted and tried hard to make my steps not sound so much like stomps as I made my way to the doors.
- But now, in the woods, he shovels so ardently he is grunting.
- Normally she was grunting and complaining about one thing or another in her usual mocking tone.
- If your language consists of little more than guttural grunts and cherry pie, you can't be blamed for not getting it.
- Their vocalisations range from low guttural contact grunts to alarm barks and screams.
- He could hear voices behind him, the low, guttural grunts of goblins or orcs.
- It's a sad fact that money doesn't exactly leak down to the actual grunt workers.
- On the other hand, I've been a jack-squat soldier surrounded by grunts more times than you could imagine.
- An infantryman who can't handle the stress of combat is liable to get himself, and some of his fellow grunts, killed in combat.
- Possibly another reason was that US drivers don't like to change down so much and prefer mid-range grunt to a lower gear.
- The three classes have varying degrees of grunt and power and a new points scoring system will be in force to help decide one champion for each of the three classes.
- There is real grunt in every gear and sending the revs soaring towards the red line before snatching the next ratio is to indulge in an act of pure ecstasy.
- Family Pomadasyidae: numerous genera and species.
- It is nonetheless a beautiful shallow reef with huge areas of elk and staghorn coral sheltering shoals of grunt, snapper and goatfish.
- Golden eye or yellowtail grunts, chubs or scads would move unhurriedly across, changing direction with uncanny synchronisation.
Origin
Old English grunnettan, of Germanic origin and related to German grunzen; probably originally imitative.
disgruntled from mid 17th century:
Disgruntled people may go round muttering to themselves and complaining. Originally the word involved comparison with a pig making small or subdued grunts (an Old English word probably imitating the sound). The main element of disgruntled is gruntle, a dialect word used of pigs from the Middle Ages and of grumbling people from a little later. In the 17th century someone added dis- as an intensifier and created disgruntled. In the 20th century the comic novelist P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) removed the dis- again and introduced the humorous gruntled, ‘pleased’. In The Code of the Woosters, published in 1938, he wrote: ‘I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.’