grouse

UK/ɡɹaʊs/US/ɡɹaʊs/

nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,896 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: grouses

A grouse is a plump moorland game bird. Shoot grouse, red grouse, a brace of grouse.

The plural is grouse, with no s. Shooting begins in Britain on the twelfth of August, called the Glorious Twelfth, and whole moors are managed by burning heather to suit the birds, which is much argued about. To grouse is also to grumble.

Definitions of grouse

1noungrouseA plump moorland game bird.C1
“A grouse burst out of the heather as we walked across the moor.”

grouse is a bird.

Where it comes from

Recorded from the 1530s, of unknown origin. The verb meaning to grumble is a separate and later word.

Proto-Indo-European
*gerh₂-
English, today
grouse

Attested in the 1530s, as grows "moorhen", a plural used collectively. The origin of the noun is unknown; the following derivations have been suggested:

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Birds

Practise this word

grouse in the wild

The black grouse (Lyrurus tetrix), also known as northern black grouse, Eurasian black grouse, blackgame or blackcock, is a large bird in the grouse tribe.
Black grouse
The black grouse is one of two species of grouse in the genus Lyrurus, the other being the lesser-known Caucasian grouse.
Black grouse
The red grouse is the emblem of the journal British Birds.
Red grouse
The red grouse is also the logo of The Famous Grouse whisky and an animated bird is a character in a series of its advertisements.
Red grouse
Found across Europe and the Palearctic, this primarily-ground-dwelling forest grouse is renowned for its courtship display.
Western capercaillie

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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