Other forms: grunts, grunting, grunted
To grunt is to make a short low rough noise in your throat instead of speaking. A pig at a trough, a man lifting one end of a sofa, a teenager answering a question about school.
It is the sound of effort and the sound of not wanting to talk, and English uses it for both: he grunted and carried on reading. The noun is the same word — a grunt of pain, a grunt of agreement — and it stands in for a whole reply, as in all I got was a grunt. In American use a grunt is also an ordinary foot soldier, the one who does the walking and the digging, and from that comes grunt work: the dull heavy jobs nobody wants. A grunt is never words. If someone answers you in grunts, they have not actually said anything.
1verbsoundTo make a short low rough sound in your throat, from effort or in place of speaking.
“He grunted something about the traffic and sat down.”
2nounshortThat short low rough sound.
“The only answer was a grunt from behind the newspaper.”
3nounordinaryAn ordinary foot soldier, or a worker given the dull heavy jobs. Informal, mainly American.
“He started as a grunt on the loading bay and ran the place ten years later.”
Grunt has been the same noise for a very long time. Old English grunnettan, to grunt, is a frequentative of an older Germanic verb — the form you use for doing something over and over — and it sits on a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to shout. German grunzen and Danish grynte are the same word in other mouths, and the English noun is simply the verb pressed into service.
Proto-Germanic
*grunnatjaną — to grunt
Proto-West Germanic
*grunnattjan
Old English
grunnettan — to grunt
Middle English
grunten
English, today
grunt
From Middle English grunten, from Old English grunnettan (“to grunt”), from Proto-West Germanic grunnattjan, from Proto-Germanic grunnatjaną (“to grunt”), frequentative of Proto-Germanic grunnōną (“to grunt”), from Proto-Indo-European gʰrun- (“to shout”). Cognate with German grunzen (“to grunt”), Danish grynte (“to grunt”). The noun senses are all instances of zero derivation from the verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Sounds & Noises
First appears in chapter 7 of A Man Called Ove.
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