grue

verb

1. (Scotland, intransitive)To be frightened; also, to shudder with fear; to quake, to tremble.

   “["]I would have done Mr. Mordaunt's bidding too," he added, relaxing from his note of defiance, into the deferential whining tone with which he cajoled his customers, "if he hadna made use of profane oaths which made my very flesh grue, and caused me, in some sort, to forget myself."”

noun

1. (Scotland)A shiver, a shudder.

   “Upon all others the sight of Alison, were it but for a moment, cast a cold grue, not to be remembered without terror.”

   “A Grue of Ice”

   “A cold grue went through me—I was unable to touch such a hand.”

2. (uncountable)Any byproduct of a gruesome event, such as gore, viscera, entrails, blood and guts.

   “The butcher was covered in the accumulated grue of a hard day's work”

   “There was grue everywhere after the accident”

   “'I've told you - it wasn't much. He tried to kiss me.' She smiled slightly. 'Just after he had shown me the family skeletons.' / 'What a lovely bit of grue!'”

   “1990, John DeChancie, Castle War! Incarnadine had to be quick with the sword. Huge wings flapped in time with explosions of grue, and the stink of burnt flesh and feathers filled the air.”

   “Carrie is Cinderella in the body language of menstrual blood and raging hormones. King’s adolescent joy in grimaces and groans, the Mad magazine humor, and the staple of “grue” hardly need mentioning.”

3. A fictional man-eating predator that dwells in the dark.

   “I managed to get into the house through the front once, but I was plunged into darkness and eaten by a monster called a grue.”

   “To find a grue, turn off the light at night, or go for a walk in a dark place (but carry a flashlight with you).”

   “Incidentally, the best official text description I know of is in Sorcerer, when you actually become a grue and visit a grue colony. IIRC, even that description is vague, but does cannonize^([sic]) that they are large four-legged reptiles.”

4. (uncountable)The property of being green when first observed before a specified time or blue when first observed after that time.

   “[T]he color grue would change in color. Colors do not do this; so ‘grue’ cannot be a color term.”

   “Philosophers made their points with thought experiments—[…] the color grue; […]”

   “We believe that among emeralds – perhaps among precious stones generally – whether something has the “color” grue is affected by discovery date, but whether it has the color green is not affected by discovery date.”

5. (uncountable)A single color inclusive of both green and blue as different shades, used in translations from languages such as Old Welsh and Old Chinese that did not always distinguish between green and blue.

   “Grue is the last of the composite categories that languages lose; hence its frequency. The transition to Stage V, where all basic color categories are primary, occurs when grue is replaced by its component primaries blue and green.”

   “Our third hypothesis supposes that grue is based primarily on green but includes blues at lower membership. This hypothesis, the “skewed” grue, is illustrated in Figure 3d.”

   “Well, as it turns out, there are a handful of cultures that see green and blue as shadings of one color: grue.”

6. (slang, uncountable)Nutraloaf, a bland mixture of foods served in prisons.

adj

1. (not-comparable)Of an object, green when first observed before a specified time or blue when first observed after that time.

   “The grue property is defined as: x is grue if and only if x is green and is observed before the year 2000, or x is blue and is not observed before the year 2000.”

   “The unexamined emeralds cannot be both green and grue, since if they are grue and unexamined they are blue.”

2. (not-comparable)Of a single color inclusive of both green and blue as different shades, used in translations from languages such as Old Welsh and Old Chinese that did not always distinguish between green and blue.

name

1. A municipality of Innlandet, Norway, formerly part of the county of Hedmark.