grub
Americannoun
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the thick-bodied, sluggish larva of several insects, as of a scarab beetle.
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a dull, plodding person; drudge.
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an unkempt person.
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Slang. food; victuals.
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any remaining roots or stumps after cutting vegetation to clear land for farming.
verb (used with object)
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to dig; clear of roots, stumps, etc.
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to dig up by the roots; uproot (often followed by up orout ).
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Slang. to supply with food; feed.
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Slang. to scrounge.
to grub a cigarette.
verb (used without object)
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to dig; search by or as if by digging.
We grubbed through piles of old junk to find the deed.
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to lead a laborious or groveling life; drudge.
It's wonderful to have money after having to grub for so many years.
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to engage in laborious study.
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Slang. to eat; take food.
verb
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to search for and pull up (roots, stumps, etc) by digging in the ground
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to dig up the surface of (ground, soil, etc), esp to clear away roots, stumps, etc
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(intr; often foll by in or among) to search carefully
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(intr) to work unceasingly, esp at a dull task or research
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slang to provide (a person) with food or (of a person) to take food
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slang (tr) to scrounge
to grub a cigarette
noun
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the short legless larva of certain insects, esp beetles
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slang food; victuals
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a person who works hard, esp in a dull plodding way
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informal a dirty child
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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grubsimple
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grubssimple
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have grubbedperfect
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has grubbedperfect
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am grubbingprogressive
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are grubbingprogressive
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is grubbingprogressive
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have been grubbingperfect progressive
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has been grubbingperfect progressive
Past
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grubbedsimple
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had grubbedperfect
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was grubbingprogressive
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were grubbingprogressive
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had been grubbingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of grub
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English grubbe (noun), grubben (verb); akin to Old High German grubilōn “to dig,” German grübeln “to rack (the brain),” Old Norse gryfia “hole, pit”; see grave 1, groove
Explanation
The noun grub can refer either to a soft, young insect or to hearty food. If your best friend invites you over for some grub, don't worry — she almost certainly means the food and not the bugs. The grubs your dad picks off of his tomato plant are insects, while the grub you eat in the school cafeteria includes spaghetti and Sloppy Joes. The most interesting thing about this word is how it went from describing a squishy, arguably gross little beetle larva to an informal term for something delicious. Experts guess that it comes from birds gobbling grubs. This slang definition has been around since the 17th century.
Vocabulary lists containing grub
Life Is So Good
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Fantastic Mr. Fox
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The Odyssey
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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:
He replied "grub" when asked about Britain's disgraced former prince Andrew, and "winner" at the mention of Melbourne-born Formula One driver Oscar Piastri.
From Barron's ● Feb. 26, 2026
When asked for a response to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, he said "grub" which drew applause from the audience.
From BBC ● Feb. 25, 2026
How did a recherché, quasi-French dish leave the skillful hands of Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved cooks and wind up being popular grub for millions of today’s cooks and consumers, white and—emphatically—black?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 13, 2026
Watching with delight in spring as a male redbird presents his mate with an edible demonstration of his “fitness as a partner,” she comments, “In the avian world, a grub is an engagement ring.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 6, 2024
Like a shadow, he slipped across the ridge, down the hill, and into the grub tent.
From "Pax" by Sara Pennypacker
But there’s a worse problem: grubs, the larvae of flies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
"They do an amazing job for nature, they eat grubs in the soil, they turn over the soil, they help soils drain and hold water".
From BBC ● Mar. 22, 2026
She uses it to tap fatefully on trees and listen for the tiny movements of tasty grubs within, which she then extracts using those same Nosferatu phalanges.
From Salon ● May 11, 2025
A few days later, workers for a lawn-care company let themselves into our backyard to treat it for grubs.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 24, 2023
As the chemical penetrated the soil the poisoned beetle grubs crawled out on the surface of the ground, where they remained for some time before they died, attractive to insect-eating birds.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
Prized ancient vineyards across France are being grubbed up.
From BBC ● Dec. 25, 2024
Throughout Europe, in California and Chile, Australia and South Africa, old vineyards have been grubbed up and replaced, either with newer vineyards that were more productive or with grapes deemed more in demand.
From New York Times ● Feb. 17, 2022
This summer, the Matinicus Rock team grubbed a 32-year-old puffin — one of the original birds in Project Puffin, brought down from Newfoundland as a chick and raised on Seal Island.
From Salon ● Jan. 7, 2022
Analysts expect a harvest of 11m-12m tonnes, one of the smallest in a generation, after many farmers grubbed up their failing, waterlogged crops and replanted fields with barley.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 12, 2013
Now and then they found a stump with the marks of the axe on it, but mostly these had been carefully covered with brambles or altogether grubbed up.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
When the rail authority bought the farms surrounding their home, about 50 miles south of Fresno, it let the crops die without grubbing the fields, the source of the pest problem, say the couple.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2021
It was a dangerous, pungent way to make a pittance, and I wonder what my Victorian sisters would think of grubbing around in the mud for the sheer joy of it.
From New York Times ● Apr. 1, 2020
Much of it, indeed, is conducted at ground level, with Tom grubbing for mushrooms or eating a hard-boiled egg and then strewing the shell fragments around a vegetable patch.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 22, 2018
"This isn't a statesmanlike speech, this is one of somebody grubbing around in the weeds for weak arguments and it's a very poor speech in that regard."
From BBC ● Feb. 28, 2018
You couldn’t expect a well-known musician to go grubbing behind a garbage can.
From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey
Definitions 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.
