Griddle, subs. (streets').—To sing in the streets. Whence, Griddling = street-singing; griddler = a street-singer.
1851-61. Mayhew, Lond. Lab. and Lond. Poor. Got a month for griddling in the main drag.
1877. Besant and Rice, Son of Vulcan, pt. I., ch. xii. Cardiff Jack's never got so low as to be griddling on the main drag—singing, I mean, on the high-road.
1888. W. Besant, Fifty Years Ago, ch. iv., p. 53. They [street singers] have not yet invented Moody and Sankey, and therefore they cannot sing 'Hold the Fort' or 'Dare to be a Daniel,' but there are hymns in every collection which suit the GRIDLER.
1890. Daily Telegraph, 20 May. Singing or shouting hymns in the streets on Sundays. To this system the name of gridling has been applied. The GRIDLERS, it was stated, were known to boast, as they returned to their haunts in Deptford and Southwark, how much they could make in a few hours.
Gridiron, subs. (American).—1. The United States' flag; the Stars and Stripes. Also Stars and Bars; Blood and Entrails; Gridiron and Doughboys; and, in speaking of the Eagle in conjunction with the flag, the Goose and Gridiron.
2. (common).—A County Court Summons. [Originally applied to Writs of the Westminster Court, the arms of which resemble a gridiron.]
1859. Sala, Gaslight and Daylight, ch. xxi. He collects debts for anybody in the neighbourhood, takes out the abhorred gridirons, or County Court summonses.
3. (thieves').—The bars on a cell window. Fr., les gaules de Schtard.
The Gridiron, subs. phr. (common).—The Grafton Club. [Where the grill is a speciality.]
On the Gridiron, adv. phr. (common).—Troubled; harassed; in a bad way; on toast (q.v.).
The Whole Gridiron, subs. phr. (common).—See Whole Animal.
Grief, To Come to Grief, verb.
phr. (colloquial).—To come to
ruin; to meet with an accident;
to fail. In quot., 1891 = trouble.
1855. Thackeray, Newcomes, ch. x. We drove on to the Downs, and we were nearly coming to grief. My horses are young, and when they get on the grass they are as if they were mad.
1888. Cassell's Saturday Jour., 8 Dec., p. 249. In the United States he had started a 'Matrimonial Agency,' in which he had come to grief, and he had been obliged to return to this country for a similar reason.
1891. Sportsman, 28 Feb. The flag had scarcely fallen than the grief commenced, as Midshipmite and Carlo rolled over at the first fence, Clanranald refused at the second, and Dog Fox fell at the third.
Griffin (or Griff), subs. (common).—1.
A new-comer; a raw
hand; a Greenhorn (q.v.) See
Snooker and Sammy Soft.
[Specific uses are (Anglo-Indian)
= a new arrival from Europe;
(military) = a young subaltern;
(Anglo-Chinese) = an unbroken
horse. Griffinage (or Griffinism)
= the state of greenhornism.
1859. H. Kingsley, Geoffry Hamlyn, ch. xxviii All the griffins ought to hunt together.
1878. Besant and Rice, By Celia's Arbour, ch. xxx. We were in the Trenches; there had been joking with a lot of griffs, young recruits just out from England.
1882. Miss Braddon, Mount Royal, ch. xxii. There was only one of the lads about the yard when he left, for it was breakfast-time, and the little griffin didn't notice.
