grue
Pronunciation Verb

grue (grues, present participle gruing; past and past participle grued)

  1. (intransitive, archaic) To be frightened; to shudder with fear.
Noun

grue (plural grues)

  1. A shiver, a shudder.
    • 1921, John Buchan, The Path of the King, chapter 9
      There was a sharp grue of ice in the air.
    • 1964, Geoffrey Jenkins, A Grue of Ice (title)
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!'
    • 1996, Linda Badley, Writing Horror and the Body
      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
      “[...] 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
      “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.
Noun

grue (plural grues)

  1. A fictional man-eating predator that dwells in the dark.
    • 1981, Byte magazine (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 (on Internet newsgroup rec.travel.australia+nz)
      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? (on Internet newsgroup rec.games.int-fiction)
      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.
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.
  2. (linguistics) Green or blue, as a translation from languages such as Welsh that do not distinguish between these hues.
Translations
  • German: blün
  • Portuguese: verzul, verul
Translations
  • German: blün
  • Portuguese: verzul, verul
  • Russian: зи́ний
Noun

grue (uncountable)

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



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