Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Grub   Listen
verb
Grub  v. i.  (past & past part. grubbed, pres. part. grubbing)  
1.
To dig in or under the ground, generally for an object that is difficult to reach or extricate; to be occupied in digging.
2.
To drudge; to do menial work.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Grub" Quotes from Famous Books



... skeletons might be preserved for the delight and instruction of the modern scientific bone-hunter. This is not one of the celebrated caves in the department, consequently the visitor with thoughts fixed on bones may carry away a sackful if he has the patience to grub for them. If the cavern were near Paris it would give rise to a fierce competition between the palaeontologist and the chiffonnier, but placed where it is the soil has not yet been much disturbed. I went in search of it up a very ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... was a new sensation. He had prided himself on his knowledge of her sex, and yet here was a wholly new species. He was acquainted with the women of society, and with the women who only wished to be in society. But here was one who was in the chrysalis, and had never been a grub, and had no wish to be a butterfly, and what should he make of her? He was like a student of insects who had never seen a bee. Never had he known a young girl who cared for the things which this maiden sought, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... accommodate its boarders without your help, Mrs. Royston. Much obliged, all the same. He ain't no nice customer. He is mighty lucky to be sure of his grub and fire and shelter this tough winter. He ain't got to do any work. He has the freedom of the yard and the halls and the office at all hours. No, madam, he is as snug as a bug in a rug. You'll have a chance to spend all the money that you care to put up in this affair, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... appears upon the scene. It, too, has to maintain life and to fulfil a duty towards its progeny. The grub eats its way through the fruit to the stem and the apple falls to the ground. But the dainty beetle chooses the strongest and soundest for its brood, otherwise too many of the strong ones would be allowed to live, and ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... previous year in corn, and probably secure a remunerative return, with little more trouble or cost than was expended on the corn. Or, he may select half the area that was in corn, plow it deeply in October, and if he detects traces of the white grub, cross-plow it again just as the ground is beginning to freeze. Early in the spring he can cover the surface with some fertilizer—there is nothing better than a rotted compost of muck and barn-yard manure—at the proportion of forty or fifty tons to the acre. Plow and cross-plow ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... of the sort that in South Africa is called Duiker, which his keen eyes had discovered in its form against a stone where it now lay shot through the head and dying. "No further trouble on score of grub for next three day," he added. "Come on to camp, Major. I send one savage skin and bring ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... times, and I like going at high pressure. Besides, this is such a grand job that the work is a sheer pleasure. By Jove! if you only knew how much happier I am these days than in any period during the twenty odd months I had spent previously playing at soldiers in the "Grub Department." It amazes me that I could have been so long contented with work like that of the A.S.C. Well, anyway, those days are over and done with, and a new and brighter era has been ushered in. As a rule, I am now almost always in an incredible state of grease and oil ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... formerly thought that this bird, like its near relatives, the downy and hairy woodpeckers, was forever boring for insects; but when we examine the regularity and symmetry of the arrangement of its holes, we realise that they are for a very different purpose than the exposing of an occasional grub. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... says I, 'Beg your pardon, Mr. Longfellow, if you'll be so kind as to hold your yawp for about five minutes and let me get this grub ready, you'll do me proud.' Well, sir, after they'd filled up I set out the jug. Mr. Holmes looks at it and then he fires up all of a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... resplendent dressing-gown and cap—the dormant grub that had so long bided its time among the Collegians had burst into a rare butterfly—rose to receive Mrs General. A chair to Mrs General. An easier chair, sir; what are you doing, what are you about, what do you ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... here could 'a' followed suit and sold the vessel. Of course they had no papers except for the French group, but in South America twenty-five years ago a piaster was a piaster. Bill was square then, as he is now, and he borrows enough money to buy grub, and he steers right back to Papeete. Gott im Himmel! Were the owners glad to see that schooner again? They had given her up as gone for good when the husband told them his wife had run away with the captain. That's how Bill got his certificate to command vessels in this archipelago, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... voice of the river that ran between the hills afar off—the same stream that further up country was to be pent between walls and prisoned to make a reservoir. Sitting there, we gazed upon the soft yet glowing beauty of it all, with never a thought of pick and spade, grub axe or crowbar, to pry between the rocks of the knoll to find the depth or quality of its soil or test ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... lasts much longer, what shall we do for grub? The sea-pie we have brought has gone bad, and I am afraid that the beef and pork won't keep good many ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... for should we be without? You've got to make dinner, and there's no wood or coal. After the grub's served out, there you are with your jaws empty, with a pile of meat in front of you, and in the middle of a lot of pals ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... with delight at these words. Though she had not been born as a grub in a sink, I thought ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various

... his impulsive brother. "It will be great. There's some grub aboard the Gull and we can stay out until nearly dark. Mother doesn't expect us home to dinner, as we said we might ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... train from forward. We were slowing for the Rawhide station, and all began to be busy and to talk. "Going up to the mines to-day?" "Oh, let's grub first." "Guess it's too late, anyway." And so forth; while they rolled and roped their bedding, and put on their coats with a good deal of elbow motion, and otherwise showed off. It was wasted. The Virginian did not know what was going on in the caboose. He was leaning and looking out ahead, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... "Grub's ready, Bob," he said, laughingly; "and I reckon we'll not bother banging on the frying pan with a big spoon to-night, range fashion. Sit down, and get your pannikin ready for some of this bacon and meat. How does ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson

... sarcasm, dispraise, and bitterness, be about as pleasant in social life as a porcupine? Surely this powerful literary lever could be plied to raise heavier stones, and to settle them in goodly order. Let others grub in the rubbish; but the leading organ of the week could sound with a grander harmony, more pleasant, and not less piquant if it gave rhythm to the mind of England in a forward march ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... who grub With filthy snouts my red potatoes up In Allan's rushy bog? Who eat the oats 25 Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides? Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather, Which should be given to cleaner ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... de Montausier, Madame de Sevigne, Madame de la Fayette, and others. The most marked thing about this hotel was the patronage extended to men of letters. Those great French ladies welcomed poets and scholars, and encouraged them, and did not allow them to starve, like the literary men of Grub Street. Had the English aristocracy extended the same helping hand to authors, the condition of English men of letters in the eighteenth century would have been far less unfortunate. Authors in France have never been excluded from high society; and this was owing in part to the influence ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... brilliant conversationalist in days when conversation was no mere slipshod gabble of slang but cut and thrust of poignant epigram and repartee; warm-hearted, perhaps too warm-hearted, and ready to lend a helping hand even to the most undeserving, a quality which gathered all Grub Street round her door. At a period when any and every writer, mean or great, of whatsoever merit or party, was continually assailed with vehement satire and acrid lampoons, lacking both truth and decency, Aphra Behn does not come off scot-free, nobody did; and upon occasion her ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... little dog—what a stump of a tail! Deal of practice—expect two accouchements every hour. Hot weather for childbirth. So says I to Mrs. Perkins, 'If Mrs. Plummer is taken, or Mrs. Everat, or if old Mr. Grub has another fit, send off at once to No. 4. Medical men should be always in the way-that's my maxim. Now, sir, where do you feel ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... over our grub that we've got piled up close by you there, Lub," warned X-Ray, after chuckling to see how the other was making such elaborate arrangements; for he did not have the remotest idea they would amount to ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... mouths ain't drippin' t'baccer juice, an' how they ain't got cow-hided 'fore the breakfast they mostly have to guess at, an' how it come you're leadin' them, 'stead o' them leadin' you, an' how their little bellies is blown out with grub like a litter o' prize hogs. Think of it, fellers, an' pass up your measly cents. It ain't the coin, it's the sperrit we want, an' when I think of all these yer blessin's I'm personal guaranteein' ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... the small quantity of corn they may destroy in searching after their favourite food." [Footnote: Mr. Bewick does not seem to have been quite aware that much of this mischief, as I have been informed by a sensible neighboring Farmer and Tenant, is done in the grub-state of the chaffer by biting through the roots of grass, &c. A latent, and imperceptibly, but rapidly spreading mischief, against which the rooks and birds of similar instinct are, in a manner, the ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... says that he can make a berth for you, and you'd better come," said the elder brother, understanding that when his edict had thus gone forth, the thing was as good as arranged. "Jack finds the boat and men, and I find the grub and wine-and pay for the fishing," said Hugh; "so you need not make any bones about it." Archie was not disposed to make any bones about it as regarded his acceptance either of the berth or of the ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... rest of us. You and I understand human nature pretty well. We won't breathe a word to any one. You tell Mrs. Keeler you're attending to important business for me, that I'm grub-staking you, and that there's something in it for you and the family. If the neighbors get wind of it, they'll think, perhaps, you are attending to money matters for me. They seem to be mighty curious ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... in Ojibway. "Where you get your blankets? Where you get your grub? How you make the Long Trail? What you do when we go far and fast? What we do with you now?" Then meeting nothing but the stolidity with which the Indian always conceals pain, he flung her ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... Shall the grub deny himself the rose-leaf That he may be moth before his time? Shall the grasshopper repress his drumbeats For small ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... sol me do, And crawling safe in shady vales below, Like snails advancing, scoff and hurt endured, Dead there upon the rack, no port secured. O brother plant, some grains of corn will grow! The faithful farmer sows live fertile seed. Be not a grub but rise and stretch hands up When on the height reach down to troubled friend, And lift your fellowmen, toil not for greed. Wash out the grounds and fill the empty cup. The rose will bloom where rocky ...
— Clear Crystals • Clara M. Beede

... busily searching the bushes for her victim. When she finds it, she inserts her ovipositor into its body and lays her egg. If some other ichneumon has preceded her, she recognizes the fact at once, and will not deposit her egg, but will go in search of another grub. When the egg is hatched, the larva feeds on the body of its host, carefully avoiding the vital organs. The caterpillar retains just enough vitality to assume the pupa state, and then dies. The chrysalis discloses, not a butterfly, ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... cook, shinning of it up, making a great hullibaloo, and shaking the tormentors behind him—that's a big iron fork he has in the galley. His face was as white as a table-cloth. Close behind him was the tiger, who had got out of his cage somehow, and, snuffing the grub, had made tracks ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... she's been a far piece, I'd say. Now you looky here, boy—you sure look like you could take some curryin' an' corn fodder under your belt too. You git over to th' Four Jacks. Topham's got him a Chinee cookin' there who serves up th' best danged grub in this here town. Fill up your belly an' take some ease. Then if we do have this little lady gittin' us up tonight, you'll be ready for it. I'll see t' th' stud an' th' mule. That colt's not a wild one." Kells surveyed Shiloh knowingly. "No, I ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... little. He wouldn't root up the honeysuckle out of the hedges (and I suppose he wouldn't let his root-gatherers grub it up, either); he didn't put it in the Queen's Gardens, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Bonnet the Brandenburg resident, and of Hoffmann the Austrian resident, who tell us much that is sought vainly in the meagre pages of Hansard. Then came the epoch of Dr. Johnson and his colleagues in Grub Street. But when the Whig reign ended, at the resignation of the great Commoner in 1761, the Whigs had not admitted the nation to the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... suffering a martyr's agony at the stake. There was a five minutes' tragic colloquy in the recesses behind the scenes,—totally tragic to Diaper, who had fondly hoped to bask in the warm sun of that annuity, and re-emerge from his state of grub. The lady then wrote the letter Sir Austin held open to his sister. The atmosphere behind the scenes is not wholesome, so, having laid the Ghost, we will return ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... speaking, and he went on: "You won't be having this sort of grub in Darneford Gaol, you know!" As she again looked at him with no understanding, he added by way of explanation: "After you've been charged to-morrow, it's there they'll send you, I expect, to wait ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... you chaps,' said he, determined as a last resource to appeal to their better feelings (if any), 'Mace was keeping this seat for me, while I went to get some grub. Weren't you, Mace?' He turned to Mace for corroboration. To his surprise, Mace was nowhere to ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... since I had lost the bighorn, and the sunball was now hung low in the heavens. It appeared to me that there was every prospect for a supperless night, too. But Big Pete evidently had no such idea, and he "'lowed" that he would "mosey" 'round a bit and kill some varmints for grub. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... the grub turns in due season into the winged plague who buzzes and fly-blows—the little reciting bore turns into the dramatic or theatric acting, reading, singing, recitative—and finally into the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... say? It must be that a grub has eaten the crop from below. Besides, what a summer has it been—never a drop ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... days later that they struck it; right in my last shaft, within a foot of where I quit diggin'. They rocked out fifty ounces first day. When the news filtered to me, of course, I never made no holler. I couldn't—that is, honestly—but I bought a six hundred dollar grub stake, loaded it aboard a dory, and—having instructed the trader regarding the disposition of my mortal, drunken remains, I fanned through that camp like a prairie fire shot in the sirloin ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... his bluejackets on these submarine chasers," said Whistler, "he'd save money on grub. I wonder these fellows," referring to the crew of the S. P. 888, "manage to keep up with ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... British Museum; but even if it were not included in Fielding's general disclaimer as to unsigned work, it would be difficult to connect it with him. To give but one reason, it would make him the ally and adherent of Cibber,—which is absurd. In all probability, like another Grub Street squib under the same pseudonym, it was by Ralph, who had already attacked Pope, and continued to maintain the Captain's character in the Champion long after Fielding had ceased to write for it. It ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... of God into him all right, Sam," said the Professor. "He's not going to touch his grub while we're here. Like all wolves, he's mighty frightened of traps; and I guess he reckons there's a trap attaching to this meat. Watch ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... inhabitants of Europe. Newton and Darwin may have rendered their language a necessity among educated and thoughtful foreigners. Dickens and Ouida (for your folk who imagine that the literary world is bounded by the prejudices of New Grub Street, would be surprised and grieved at the position occupied abroad by this at-home-sneered-at lady) may have helped still further to popularise it. But the man who has spread the knowledge of English from Cape St. Vincent to the Ural Mountains is the ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... Jimmy, after some deep breaths and several self-inflicted punches. "It doesn't hurt a bit to breathe, and I don't feel lame anywhere. The only place I feel bad is in my stomach, and that's just shouting for grub." ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... and in a wild state in the forest. These pigs are the descendants of those imported by the Spaniards, and not long ago became such an awful nuisance in Clarence that the Government issued instructions that all pigs without rings in their noses—i.e. all in a condition to grub up back gardens—should be forthwith shot if found abroad. This proclamation was issued by the governmental bellman thus: —"I say—I say—I say—I say. Suppose pig walk—iron no live for him nose! Gun shoot. Kill him one time. Hear ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... the first of several fish ponds, constructed, no doubt, with both beauty and utility in mind. A note in his Weather Memorandum Book under date April 1812 tells us: "The two fish ponds on the Colle branch were 40 days work to grub, ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... along. Bet you he's sniffed some of these delicious smells away up at the house. Larry, if you don't get a move on, and announce dinner pretty soon, I declare if I don't start a raid on the grub. Can't stand for much more of this," and Elephant hugged himself as though it were only by a determined effort that he refrained from beginning work ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy

... fellers," he said with a laugh. "You want to get some grub on the fly, so you won't have to stop, an' can beat th' other fellow. I know you, fer I see them automobile goggles stickin' out of ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton

... two. We're partners, prospecting,—been down towards the Sonora line. For the Lord's sake, gentlemen, don't keep us out here. We've lost everything we had,—packs, packers, and grub. We're about dead beat for a ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... locusts of the locality had suffered great slaughter. Some of them in the hole or den had been eaten to a mere shell by the larvæ of the hornet. Under the wing of each insect an egg is attached; the egg soon hatches, and the grub at once proceeds to devour the food its thoughtful parent has provided. As it grows, it weaves itself a sort of shell or cocoon, in which, after a time, it undergoes its metamorphosis, and comes out, I think, a perfect insect ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... "Grub pile!" sang out Moise now, laughing as he moved the pans and the steaming tea-kettle by the side of the fire. And very soon the boys were falling to with good will in their ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough

... the grub and the game all right," he reflected finally. "Anyhow they will let me alone, ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... freeze and dig all day in a mine—not of their own, but for wages—and not feel so greatly abused or unhappy; that they will swing an axe all day in a forest and live on baked beans and bread without feeling like martyrs; that they will go to sea and grub on hard tack and salt pork and fish without complaint and then will turn Anarchists on the same fare in the East. It seems strange too that these men keep strong and healthy, and that our ancestors kept strong ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... said, "I thought it would be so fine to stay behind and be able to scoff the cabin grub just as I pleased. I just stayed for ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... hard-luck parables, with a few chapters from Job thrown in, and then one day he met old Jim. He seemed to cotton to Thorn from the jump. Explained to him that there was nothing in this digging gopher holes in the solid rock and eating Chinaman's grub for the sake of making niggers' wages. Allowed that he was letting other fellows dig the holes, and that he was selling them at a fair margin of profit to young Eastern capitalists who hadn't been in the country long enough to lose their roll and that trust in Mankind and Nature which was Youth's ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... seen that sort o' bloke before. Polensky said he'd got a pain in 'is stummik, so the doctor says it must be becos 'is diet was too rich, and knocks orf arf 'is grub. I tell yer, Polensky was sorry ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... with you than with me," he excused himself. "Fasten it inside your dress. It's our grub-stake into ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... if my steward carried out the orders I wired him, she must be loaded to the muzzle with good things to eat and drink, for I told him to fill her up with the best to be had in New York City. So if any of the fellows are hankering for a change of grub, all they've got to do is to catch a fever or a Mauser bullet, and apply for a berth on the Nun. For my own part I prefer hardtack, bacon, and good health; but ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe

... for themselves as they ought to. Now listen to me, Toby, an' remember what I say. You see they put us all in a hotel together, an' some of these places where we go don't have any too much stuff on the table. Whenever we strike a new town you find out at the hotel what time they have the grub ready, an' you be on hand, so's to get in with the first. Eat all you can, ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis

... nothing. This crew usually eats at the end of the division. It's not like a freight train crew. We'd be a whole lot better off right now," added the conductor, reflectively, "if we had a caboose attached to the end of this train. We'd stand a chance of rustling up some grub ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... dead, the Laureate's dead!' 'Twas thus the cry began, And straightway every garret-roof gave up its minstrel man; From Grub Street, and from Houndsditch, and from Farringdon Within, The poets all towards Whitehall poured on with ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... twenty years. This man in the long black coat, carrying a bamboo wand, who adjusts his monocle and throws off an epigram, who confounds the critics, befogs the lawyers, affronts millionaires from Colorado, and plays pitch and toss with words, is the Whistler known to newspaperdom. And Grub Street calls him "Jimmy," too, but the voice of Grub Street is guttural and in it is no tender cadence—it is tone that tells, not the mere word: I have been addressed with an endearing phrase when the words stabbed. Grub Street sees only the one man and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... what it is, mates, I have been thinking this here matter over, and when I sees what tremendous prices are being charged for grub here, I concluded there must be a big thing to be made in the way of carrying. Now we have got our five riding-horses, and the three baggage-horses, that makes eight. Now what I proposes is this: three of us shall work ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... opinion that drawn-work was no more out of place than the many boxes of pinoche and marshmallows that Blue Bonnet packed away in the huge "grub-boxes," but she yielded with her usual ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs

... fancy, and halted to smoke. On a patch of turf close to a grey stone bridge he had out his Walton and read the chapter on "The Chavender or Chub." The collocation of words delighted him and inspired him to verse. "Lavender or Lub"—"Pavender or Pub"-"Gravender or Grub"—but the monosyllables proved too vulgar for ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... sportsman of the Inner Temple not twelve hours after we saw him stewing in his London chambers. What a metamorphosis is this! Just as the may-fly, after two years of confinement as a wretched grub in the muddy bed of the stream, throws off its shackles, gives its wings a shake, and soars into the glorious June atmosphere, happy to be free, so does the poor caged bird rejoice, after grubbing for an ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... trouble no gen'leman to perwide for my family—obleeged all the same, sir. Mattie never wos a dub at dewourin', but I'll get her some'at toothsome. I favours grub myself. ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... Our Goddess of Grub was built on lines so majestic that they could be followed only with awe. Her sleeves were always rolled above her elbows. She could have taken us three musketeers in her two hands and dropped us out of the window. She had seen fewer years than any of us, but she ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... cultivated maize, beans, squashes, pepper, cotton, cacao, and tobacco in garden beds, and exercised some care over certain native fruits; cultivation tending to localize them in villages. Herrera remarks of the Village Indians of Honduras that "they sow thrice a year, and they were wont to grub up great woods with hatchets made of flint." [Footnote: ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... is gypsy-like. Our washing lies spread on bushes, where it will catch the first peep of morning sun. Perishable provisions rest in notches of trees, where the cool evening breeze will strike them. Seated upon the "grub" box, I am writing up our log by aid of the lantern hung from a branch overhead, while W——, ever busy, sits by with her mending. Lying in the moonlight, which through the sprawling willows gayly checkers our sand ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... here," interposed the old man, a look of pride in his eyes as he gazed at his daughter. "He likes her fust rate. She says it's 'cause she takes him grub an' good things to eat. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope

... sort of a shack right over the sluice-gate of that second dam,—nothing very fancy, but good enough to camp in. I want you to live there day and night. Never leave it, not even for a minute. The cookee will bring you grub. Take this Winchester. If any of the men from up-river try to go out on the dam, you warn them off. If they persist, you shoot near them. If they keep coming, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... eaten anything yet; and talking of grub, what do you say to coming and having some? There's a splendid spread behind that glass screen,' ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... There'll soon be sleet and snow in the air, and cold days and shivery nights, and the portages will be long and hard. On the whole, there's been plenty to eat—not what we would have had at home, perhaps, but good, wholesome grub—and we're all in better condition and stronger than when we started, but flour and pork are getting low, lentils and corn meal are nearly gone, and short rations, with hungry days, are soon to come if we don't strike game, and you know how uncertain that is. I cannot say what ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... first. None of us have grown asparagus yet; but it will be well to know about this vegetable. There is a beetle which may trouble asparagus plants. It is red with markings of black. The grub of this beetle is dark green. Look out for the asparagus beetle during April and May, for these are the months when it appears. The eggs are laid on young shoots of the plant. Such shoots should be cut ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... million ounces for coining purposes, and it meant a lot of money for us all. Everywhere around the hills and gulches you could see prospectors, with their gads and little picks, fooling around like life did n't mean anything in the world to 'em, except to grub around in those rocks. That was the idea, you see, to fool around until they 'd found a bit of ore or float, as they called it, and then follow it up the gorge until they came to rock or indications that 'd give 'em reason to think that the vein was around there somewhere. ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... were heard the wheels of the drag, and in rushed one of the boys, grasping Eleonora's skirts, and proclaiming, "We've got the grub! Oysters and ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to the Roman Church, or at least a less full comprehension of the grandeur of the Latin religious civilisation than might have been expected of a man of Browning's great imaginative tolerance. AEstheticism, Bohemianism, the irresponsibilities of the artist, the untidy morals of Grub Street and the Latin Quarter, he hated with a consuming hatred. He was himself exact in everything, from his scholarship to his clothes; and even when he wore the loose white garments of the lounger ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... thought it wise to convey to Lady Mary her opinion that Filmer, all things considered, was rather a "grub." "He's certainly not a sort of man I have ever met before," said the Lady Mary, with a quite unruffled serenity. And Mrs. Bampton, after a swift, imperceptible glance at that serenity, decided that so far as saying anything to Lady ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... "She ate her grub last night and this morning middlin' well, miss," said Patsey, "and"—here he looked round stealthily and began to whisper—"when I had her in the ring, exercisin', this morning, there was one that called me in to the rails; like a dealer ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... he explained. "I get a shilling a day and my grub, and I earn all that. But, of course, I'm not going to be a farmer. I'm just learning about the land—then I'm going. Nobody's clever here. But I like taking it easy ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... roared, "Yes, sir, he'd be a butterfly, and I don't see why he shouldn't very soon. His legs are gone, and his wings aren't come: so he's a grub now, and that, you know, is the next thing to it. What a funny old beggar it ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... simplicity.[110] "I have enough to live on for two or three years," he said, "but if I were dying of hunger, I would rather in the present condition of your good prince, and not being of any service to him, go and eat grass and grub up roots, than accept a morsel of bread from him."[111] Hume might well call this a phenomenon in the world of letters, and one very honourable for the person concerned.[112] And we recognise its dignity the more when we contrast it with the baseness of Voltaire, who drew his ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... exceedingly fond of snails, and would eagerly thrust a fore-paw into the crannies of any old wall or bank where they hibernated; but Vulp much preferred to scratch up the moss in a deserted gravel-pit, and grub in the loosened soil for the drowsy blow-flies and beetles that had chosen the spot for their winter abode. This was the reason for such different tastes: the vixen, when a cub, had often basked in the sun near a snails' favourite resort, and had there acquired a liking ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... resort, so I stow away on a coal-burner, but somebody flags me. Then I try to hire out as a fisherman, but I ain't there with the gang talk and my stuff drags, so I fix it for a hide-away on The Blessed Isle—that's her name. Can you beat that for a monaker? This sailor of mine goes good to grub me, but he never shows for forty-eight hours—or years, I forget which. Anyhow, I stand it as long as I can, then I dig my way up to a hatch and mew like a house-cat. It seems they were hep from the start, and battened me down on purpose, then made book on how long I'd stay ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... Lobeira, or whoever was the author of the great romance of the last chivalric type. There are more intricacies in it; the heroine plays a rather more important part; there is even something of a nearer approach to modern novel-ways in this production, which reappeared at "Grub Street near the Upper Pump" in the year 1650. Ornatus sees his mistress asleep and in a kind of deshabille, employs a noble go-between, Adellena (a queer spelling of "Adelina" which may be intentional), is rejected with apparent indignation, of course; writes ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... Nell.—I'm your cousin Jack. Your father once give me money to come out West. I've took up land, got a comfortable home, no style or frills, but good folks to live with and healthy grub. I've got the best wife you ever see and seven fine youngsters. The city ain't no place for a friendless girl. Wife wants you to come. She'll be a mother to you. Come right off. I'll meet ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... poetical tract, of whatever merit, which was hawked through the streets in his time, marking carefully the price and the date of the purchase. His collection contains the earliest editions of many of our most excellent poems, bound up, according to the order of time, with the lowest trash of Grub Street. It was dispersed on Mr. Luttrell's death," adds Sir Walter Scott, and he then mentions Mr. James Bindley and Mr. Richard Heber as having "obtained a great share of the Luttrell collection, and liberally furnished him with the loan of some of them in order to the more ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... do wonder if I can," he said. "I feel just exactly like as if I could. I say, farver, let's get out in the woods somewheres quiet and take our grub along. Somewheres where nobody can't say, 'What you up to?' and make a mock ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... and also spoke about its being in terminals. If you look carefully you see a very definite hole here in the husk. That is where the adult punctured the husk. It may have been a feeding puncture first and later an egg was laid inside, and then you get the maggot or the grub of the curculio developing in there, so that superficially that discoloration looks very much like the walnut husk maggot. But in this case you may not find over one or two maggots in a nut. And the other difference is that these fruits which are attacked usually ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... glass. A fraternity was established in the street. They drank to anyone who passed. They called in any chaps who looked the right sort. The feast spread, extending from one to another, to the degree that the entire neighborhood of the Goutte-d'Or sniffed the grub, and held its stomach, amidst a rumpus worthy of the devil and all his demons. For some minutes, Madame Vigouroux, the charcoal-dealer, had been passing to and fro before ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... Grub Street dropped in, shabby, seedy, empty of pocket but full of hope, and little suppers were given in dingy coffeehouses where success to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... the plum and peach is a small snout-beetle that inserts its eggs under the skin of the fruit and then makes a characteristic crescent-shaped cut beneath it. The grub feeds within the fruit and causes it to drop. When full grown, it enters the ground, changes in late summer to the beetle, which finally goes into hibernation in sheltered places. Spray plums just after ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... which she proceeds gradually to devour. Having finished the egg, she attacks the honey; but under these circumstances the activity which was at first so necessary has become useless; the legs which did such good service are no longer required; and the active slim larva changes into a white fleshy grub, which floats comfortably in the honey with its mouth ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... among [the distinguished writers of his age] the solitary specimen of a past age, the last survivor of the genuine race of Grub Street hacks; the last of that generation of authors whose abject misery and whose dissolute manners had furnished inexhaustible matter to the satirical genius of Pope. From nature he had received ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... world," said Mrs. Bates, plumply, "He has been with his father for the last four years, and he's come to be a real help to him. Gets to the office at eight o'clock, rain or shine, and loves nothing better than to sit and grub there all day long. Steady as a rock. Splendid future. Holds his own nose to the grindstone like a real little lamb. I hope he ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... trees that Mrs. Ledbetter has, on her husband's farm. He was about to sell that tree for a log and a stump. They come along and grub the stumps out and sell the stumps and all for veneerwood. But she wouldn't let him sell it, and over the course of the last few years they sold enough kernels more than to pay for that walnut tree and it is still going ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... light above her head, went up to the white bed. The face on the pillow was of that pure lustrous whiteness which is sometimes seen in very young children; the features were perfect. She seemed a creature of an entirely different sphere—as different from Religion as a butterfly from a grub, and yet there was an indefinable likeness ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... whatever merit, which was hawked through the streets in his time, marking carefully the price and date of purchase. His collection contains the earliest editions of many of our most excellent poems, bound up, according to the order of time, with the lowest trash of Grub Street.' On Luttrell's death, which took place at his residence in Chelsea on the 27th of June 1732, the collection became the property of Francis Luttrell (presumed to be his son), who died in 1740. It afterwards passed into the possession of Mr. Serjeant Wynne, and from him ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... with a finer effect than if we had been on shore." The Elephant can also eject from his trunk water and dust, and his own saliva, over every part of his body, to cool its heated surface; and he is said to grub up dust, and blow it over his back and sides, to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various

... heart was touched for him. It was hard to grub for a bare subsistence, with the immediate prospect of dying in the street. Washburn looked expressively at me, and I nodded to him. We rose from the table, and told Cobbington to come with us. We took him to a clothing-house, fitted him out with a new suit, yacht-club ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic

... too frightened to cross the platform in the dark! Never saw anything like 'em! Tears! An' dignified! When I climbed down they was too afraid next to be left alone. Swore train-thieves 'ud murder 'em! I had to leave 'em my key to lock 'emselves in with until I come back with the grub! What ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... he said, as he kissed her. "I'll let you know what happens, if I can. By the way, there's a globe in the shed I want you to send back to Dawkins, the school-master, first thing to-morrow. Good-bye! Send Roddy after me as soon as he has finished his grub." ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... said the burly Moze, who appeared as broad as he was black-visaged. "Fall's sure a-comin'... Now if only we had some grub!" ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... in sight. He slowly wiped off the pie crust and bread and potatoes. "Anybody'd think I was a busted grub wagon," he grumbled. When he had fished the last piece of beef out of his ear he went out and offered to stand treat. As the round-up was over, they slid into their saddles and raced for Cowan's ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... of a Pope in effigy," notes Scott—in his reprint of what Swift called "the Grub Street account of the tumult"—"upon the 17th November, the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's coronation, was a favourite pastime with the mob of London, and often employed by their superiors as a means of working upon ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... from Liverpool to 'Frisco. Think of it, sir. Two hundred and thirty days! And we was loaded with cement and creosote, and the creosote got loose. We buried the captain right here off the Horn. The grub gave out. Most of us nearly died of scurvy. Every man Jack of us was carted to hospital in 'Frisco. It was plain hell, sir, that's what it was, an' two hundred and ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... he answered with sad kindliness. "I brung myself up, ma, an' I brung up Will. He's bigger'n me, an' heavier, an' taller. When I was a kid, I reckon I didn't git enough to eat. When he come along an' was a kid, I was workin' an' earnin' grub for him too. But that's done with. Will can go to work, same as me, or he can go to hell, I don't care which. I'm tired. I'm goin' now. Ain't you goin' ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... girls making grub," Hugh explained to the other two; "they're great on grub." He might have added that he was great on it himself, so far as eating it was concerned. Certainly Dick and Jerry were very pleased to know that they had not to wait until half-past eight for breakfast, ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

... Countess of Cornbeef, removing the lid, "I'll stay; but keep that husband of yours with the woozy lingo out of the kitchen, because I'm a nervous woman—I am that!" and then the Duchess of Devilledkidneys got a strangle-hold on her green umbrella and ducked for the grub foundry. ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart

... Barry's response. "A man that could put such a hand on himself as he did has conquered a world. He didn't want to go, but he went as so many have gone hereabouts. He wanted to stay, but he went against his will, and—and I wish that the grub-hunters, and tuft-hunters, and the blind greedy majority in England could get hold of what he got hold of. Then life 'd be a different thing in Thamesfontein and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... that grub ready?" he growled. "Hi, you, Pete, quit those dice an' see to it. You're 'chores' to-day. We've got to make forty miles with those damned ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... in the Mall, and who should I meet but Major Bradford, a gentleman from Connecticut, that traded in calves and pumpkins for the Boston market. Says he, 'Slick, where do you get your grub today?' 'At General Peep's tavern,' says I. 'Only fit for niggers,' says he, 'why don't you come to the TREE-mont house, that's the most splendid thing, it's generally allowed, in all the world.' 'Why,' says I, 'that's ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... object and subject, necessity and free will, and other kindred subjects. We want to know where we are, and in the hope of simplifying matters, strip, as it were, each subject to the skin, and finding that even this has not freed it from all extraneous matter, flay it alive in the hope that if we grub down deep enough we shall come upon it in its pure unalloyed state free from all inconvenient complication through intermixture with anything alien to itself. Then, indeed, we can docket it, and pigeon-hole it for what it is; but what can we do with it till we have ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... the hopes and fears of a crowd of inferior writers, "who," he said, in the words of Roger Ascham, "lived men knew not how, and died obscure, men marked not when." He believed, that he could give a better history of Grub street than any man living. His house was filled with a succession of visitors till four or five in the evening. During the whole time he presided at his tea-table. Tea was his favourite beverage; and, when the late Jonas Hanway pronounced his anathema against ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... not well understood. Its most distinguishing trait was absolute fidelity. As long as he liked you well enough to take your pay and eat your grub, you could, except in very rare instances, rely implicitly upon his faithfulness and honesty. To be sure, if he got the least idea he was being misused he might begin throwing lead at you out of the business ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... soil in strips about 10 feet apart and sowing the seed in these strips. On unburned areas covered with a dense growth of fern, salal, moss, grass, or other plants, this covering must be removed by the seed spot method. This consists in removing the ground cover with a grub hoe or mattock in spots of varying diameter (6 inches to 3 feet) and of various distances apart (6 to 15 feet), and sowing the seed in these spots. The advantages of this method are that a minimum amount ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... sarcasms on its occupant. Some of the verses written about Queen Caroline, verses often containing the foulest and filthiest libels, followed her into the sick-chamber, {103} the bed of death, the coffin, and the grave. One could easily understand all this if the libellers had been vulgar and venal Grub Street hacks who were paid to attack some enemy of their paymaster. But the vilest calumnies of the time were penned by men of genius, by men of the highest rank in literature; by men whose literary position made them ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... Newmarket and Colchester, and I wouldn't believe the boys who called to me that I'd be stopped; but sure enough, not two miles east of Peterboro' the road slid under water and people were punting themselves about on doors, and cooking their grub upstairs. In the fields the hay-cocks and corn-ricks were just showing themselves above the water. It made one's heart ache for the farmers. Well, I turned back, of course, and took the London road to Huntingdon, which runs high all the way to Alconbury. I was getting jolly ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... to her through the window, "we won't bother about going out to grub; we'll have a day in the country; we can enjoy ourselves just as much there. Eh, dear? Oh, I beg your pardon, but you're so pretty, you ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... touch we should have had to stay in our bleak huts, constantly reminded of our surroundings and discomforts. But these Y.M. people had provided a comfortable, well-lighted, and, above all, warm room, with plenty of books and papers and any amount of grub and unlimited tea to wash it down. Isn't it wonderful how many sorrows the British army can drown in a ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams

... got to feed 'em," said Crane. "But five hundred men eat a lot of grub. Can you swing it if we give you a ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... other. The cost of the "feed," as Mr. Timmis termed it, was generally decided by a toss of "best two and three;" and somehow it invariably happened that Mr. Crobble lost; but he was so good-humoured, that really it was a pleasure, as Mr. Wallis said, to "grub" at ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... very amusing and is a regular young flirt. She can sing like a hunny bee and her papa can play on the fiddle nicely and we might have a rare ho-down. Amelia is highely educated, she can dance like a grasshopper looking for grub and she can meke beautiful bread, it tastes just like hunny bees' bread and for pumpkin pies she can't be beat. In fact she's ahead of all F girls and will make a good ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous

... cause for grief: I'm scorn'd despis'd, neglected, A vulgar muse, got by some Grub-street bard, On obscure Ignorance, in gaol or stews, Usurps my ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... said long ago, that poets, like canaries, must be starved in order to keep them in good voice, and, in the palmy days of Grub Street, an editor's table was nothing grander than his own knee, on which, in his airy garret, he unrolled his paper-parcel of dinner, happy if its wrapping were a sheet from Brown's last poem, and not his own. Now an editorial ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... parasites. First there is the original seed, ripening vigorously enough. And then comes some insect and lays an egg under the skin, and behold! in a little while the seed is a hollow shape with an active grub inside that has eaten out its substance. And then comes some secondary parasite, some ichneumon fly, and lays an egg within this grub, and behold! that, too, is a hollow shape, and the new living thing is inside its predecessor's skin which itself is snug within ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... and scoot round getten' this stranger some breakfast and some grub to take with him. He's one of them San Francisco sports out here trout-fishing in the branch. He's got adrift from his party, has lost his rod and fixins, and had to camp out last night in ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte



Words linked to "Grub" :   mooch, maggot, Grub Street, eats, grubby, cadge, bum, larva, look for, sponge, freeload, chow, search, grub out, obtain, grub up, leatherjacket



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com