grizzly
Americannoun
-
grizzlies
plural
-
a device for screening ore, consisting of a row of iron or steel bars.
adjective
noun
Usage
Grizzly is sometimes wrongly used where grisly is meant: a grisly (not grizzly ) murder
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of grizzly
Explanation
A grizzly is a large North American species of bear also known as a silvertip bear. When you go camping and hiking in the western United States, park rangers might teach you what to do if you see a grizzly. The grizzly bear's formal Latin name, Ursus arctos horribilis, came from confusion between grizzly and grisly, or "horrible." Grizzly bears are known for being solitary and having brown fur tipped in white or gray. The adjective grizzly probably arose from these "grizzled" or gray-colored hairs, since it describes appearing aged or old, especially because of graying hair.
Vocabulary lists containing grizzly
Name On: Pro Sports Team Names, Part 1
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Commonly Confused Words, List 3
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Commonly Confused Words, List 5
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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.
See Examples For:
Between 10,000 and 13,000 grizzly bears are estimated to live in the province, according to the province's Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, which has classified them as vulnerable.
From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2026
These animals can be dangerous, same as a grizzly bear or elephant, but people tend to value sharks a lot less.
From Salon ● Oct. 9, 2026
Old friend Kirk Cousins will warm the Raiders offense long enough for No. 1 pick Fernando Mendoza to grow a grizzly Kenny Stabler-style beard or for part-owner Brady to un-retire, whatever comes first.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
Yet in 1889, as a publicity stunt, he sent out a young San Francisco Examiner reporter, Allen Kelly, to bring him a live California grizzly bear.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
Watching Bax flop and dive for pucks was like watching grizzly bears catch salmon leaping upstream.
From "Tradition" by Brendan Kiely
"With no hunting pressure, grizzlies and humans will increasingly occupy the same spaces with inevitable consequences," the BCWF's executive director Jesse Zeman said at the time.
From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2026
He noted the peninsula had once been home to animals such as pronghorn, sea otter, North American porcupine, Humboldt marten, gray wolf, American black bear, grizzlies, northern fur seal and Steller sea lion.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2026
Today, federal wildlife officials estimate there are close to 2,000 grizzlies in the lower 48, concentrated primarily in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 8, 2026
McLellan was involved in efforts to restore grizzlies in the North Cascades in Washington state and the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area in Montana and Idaho.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 15, 2025
The forest was filled with grizzlies and wolves.
From "I Survived the Great Alaska Earthquake, 1964" by Lauren Tarshis
Promotional artwork for season five seems to show a grizzlier Rick than we’ve seen before and, thus, probably some payout on the cliff hanger ending.
From Time ● Oct. 10, 2014
The bears ground the eagles with a swipe of the paw, and it only gets grizzlier from there.
From Slate ● Mar. 23, 2012
They hold to a notion of the individual that the grizzliest fur trapper west of the Missouri River 170 years ago would have found extreme.
From Salon ● May 26, 2013
Mated with the game's irresistible sweetness, the outcome is a game-world which is truly universal in its appeal – the youngest children and grizzliest hardcore gamers alike will be held equally rapt by its charms.
From The Guardian ● May 27, 2010
And when my father was a young man, somewhere up north of Sacramento, in a creek called Cache Slough, the tules was full of grizzliest He used to go in an' shoot 'em.
From The Valley of the Moon by Jack London
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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.
