¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Definition of Girns
1. girn [v] - See also: girn
Lexicographical Neighbors of Girns
Literary usage of Girns
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. Curiosities in Proverbs: A Collection of Unusual Adages, Maxims, Aphorisms by Dwight Edwards Marvin (1916)
"He girns like a sheep's head in a pair of tangs. (Scotch). ... "He girns like a
sprained puggy"—or, as the English would say, "like a Cheshire cat. ..."
2. Curiosities in Proverbs: A Collection of Unusual Adages, Maxims, Aphorisms by Dwight Edwards Marvin (1916)
"He girns like a sheep's head in a pair of tangs. (Scotch). ... "He girns like a
sprained puggy"—or, as the English would say, "like a Cheshire cat. ..."
3. Proverbs, Proverbial Expressions, and Popular Rhymes of Scotland by Andrew Cheviot (1896)
"That is, he gave me fair words. The Scots call flatteries, whitings, and flatterers,
white people.—Kelly. HE girns like a sheep's head in a pair o' tangs. ..."
4. Scottish Notes and Queries by John Malcolm Bulloch (1891)
"... expressed the general contempt for weavers by declaring— Aw wadna be a weaver
be ony, O, Aw wadna be a weaver be ony, O, For he sits an' he girns, ..."
5. The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia by John Mactaggart (1876)
"Poachers set girns in these to catch the game. ... he had much ado in setting
her free, then swore he, that "girns he wad never set mair. ..."
6. The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns by Robert Burns, William Ernest Henley (1897)
"... (2) gapes: "that girns for the fishes and loaves, 166 ; (o) snarls : " girns
and looks back," 125. ..."
7. Treatise on the Offices of Justice of Peace, Constable, Commissioner of by Gilbert Hutcheson (1806)
"... ordains, that none kill deer, or any kind of wild fowl, in (how, nor at any
other time, with guns and girns, under —DEER, the penalty of lool. Scots. ..."
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