Other forms: grievances
A grievance is a formal complaint made by an employee. Raise a grievance, a grievance procedure, a grievance hearing.
In British workplaces it is a defined process running alongside the disciplinary one: the employee complains, the employer investigates, there is a hearing and an appeal. Getting the procedure wrong is itself a claim. More broadly a grievance is any lasting sense of having been wronged — nurse a grievance, an old grievance. Note grieve; and that the word comes from the Latin for heavy.
1noungrievanceA formal complaint made by an employee.
“The nurse filed a grievance with the hospital after she was refused her holiday.”
2nounlastingA lasting sense of having been wronged.
“He still nurses a grievance against his brother over their father's will.”
grievance is a complaint.
Old French grievance comes from grever, to burden, from Latin gravis, heavy. Grave, gravity and aggrieve come from the same weight.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʷreh₂-
Old French
grievance
English, today
grievance
Built from
From Old French grievance, from the verb grever (“to irritate; to bother; to annoy”) + -ance, equivalent to grieve + -ance.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA