Grub

How to spell grub

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce grub

What does grub mean?

1. nounThe soft, legless or short-legged larva of an insect, especially a beetle, found in soil or rotting wood.
2. nounAn informal word for food or a meal.
3. verbTo dig in the ground, or to search about for something with effort.

Grub in a sentence

• noun

  The gardener found a fat white grub curled in the compost.

• noun

  After the long hike they stopped at a diner for some grub.

• verb

  The pigs grub in the mud for roots and acorns.

• noun

  Each grub feeds on the roots before it pupates into a beetle.

• noun

  The pub serves decent grub at a fair price.

• verb

  She had to grub through old boxes to find the receipt.

Where does grub come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Grub comes from the Middle English verb grubben, meaning to dig or root about in the soil, and it traces back to a Germanic root shared with Old English and Old High German words for digging and scratching at the earth. The same root family gives us 'grave' and the Dutch 'graven', all carrying the idea of breaking into the ground. The noun sense for an insect larva arose in the 1400s because such larvae are typically found by digging, and they themselves burrow and grub through soil and rotting wood. The familiar slang sense of 'food' appeared much later, around the 1600s, probably as a jokey extension from the way birds grub about for grubs to eat. Across every sense the spelling stays simple and phonetic, so the only real trap is remembering it ends in a single 'b' rather than doubling it.

How the word is built

• grub (from Middle English grubben: to dig in the ground)