GRINCH Definition & Meaning

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grinch

[ grinch ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

a person or thing that spoils or dampens the pleasure of others.

grinch

/ ɡ��ɪ�Գ�ʃ /

noun

informal.
a person whose lack of enthusiasm or bad temper has a depressing effect on others

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�y��vlog History and Origins

Origin of grinch¹

Coined by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) in the children’s book How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957), the Grinch being the central misanthropic character

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�y��vlog History and Origins

Origin of grinch¹

C20: from a character in the 1957 children's book How the Grinch stole Christmas by Dr Seuss (1904–91), US writer and illustrator, whose full name was Theodor Seuss Geisel

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

I don’t mean to be a grinch; Christmas and New Year’s are worthy observations, not media distractions, but could the timing be worse?

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Southwest Airlines was the grinch that stole this year’s Christmas for travelers across the country.

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“Inflation is a grinch. Americans are trimming their holiday gift spending,” reported MarketWatch.com.

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Everywhere I turned, I saw decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas all merged into a torture chamber bedecked with lighted trees, inflatable grinches, pumpkins, scarecrows and turkey fryers.

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A variant first detected in India, known as delta, exploded across the South before blanketing the country, only to be upstaged by the new and faster-moving omicron variant, which played the Christmas grinch.

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