grizzled
Americanadjective
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having gray or partly gray hair.
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gray or partly gray.
adjective
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streaked or mixed with grey; grizzly; griseous
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having grey or partly grey hair
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of grizzled
Explanation
If someone's hair is streaked with gray, you can describe it as grizzled. Your dad's grizzled beard might need a trim by the end of your two-week camping trip. As well as a good way to talk about the silvery hair (or facial hair) itself, you can also describe a person as grizzled. Before he went totally white-haired, Santa Claus must have been grizzled. This adjective comes from a 14th-century noun, grizzle, which meant both "gray-haired old man" and "gray horse," and probably came from the Old French grisel, "gray."
Vocabulary lists containing grizzled
The Sea of Monsters
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Ancient Wisdom: Synonyms for "Old"
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The Shining
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Ms. Atkinson’s lighthearted novel mines delicious humor from this mismatch of grizzled cynicism and national heritage.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
Matt Roush says, “I hope voters give grizzled veteran Sam Elliott his due for a memorable ‘Landman’ arc.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 21, 2026
"As a crime viewer, I've had enough of troubled, grizzled detectives in the wilderness battling their demons," he said.
From BBC ● May 19, 2026
The singer himself told The Times in 1992 that the album’s hit ballad, in which a grizzled narrator blubbers over the one that got away, “had a real strong emotional peak on the record.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 6, 2026
His wooden leg was gone, the socket that should have held the magical eye looked empty beneath its lid, and chunks of his grizzled hair were missing.
From "Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire" by J. K. Rowling
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
