CONVERTIBILITY OF THE WORDS "GRIN" AND "GIN".
Will some more learned readers than your present querist be so good as to tell us how it came to pass that the word grin became changed in our modern Bibles for gin (sometimes spelled ginn), with which it would seem there can be no cognation? In the sense of a trap or snare grin occurs in Job xviii. 9., Ps. cxl. 5., and Ps. cxli. 9., in two Bibles which I have, viz., one "printed at London by Robert Barker, printer to the King's most excellent Majestie, 1640," and the other "printed by John Hayes, printer to the University of Cambridge, 1677."
In Cruden's Concordance, 1737, 1761, and 1769, it is given as grin in these instances; neither in the modern editions of that valuable book have they noticed the word gin as now used in the said three texts which would indicate that it is only within some eighty years, at any rate, that the change was adopted by the king's printer, and Oxford and Cambridge. Singularly enough, in these old editions of 1640 and 1677, while grin is used in Job and Psalms, gin is given in the side-note of Job xl. 24., in the text of Isa. viii. 14., and Amos iii. 5.
Now to grin (from the Saxon grinian) means, according to philologists, to show the teeth set together; the act of closing the teeth; so that we may suppose an allusion to the barbarous instrument called a man-trap, unless the idea is negatived by the side-note Job xl. 24., on the impossibility of boring Behemoth's nose with a gin, which would hardly be the word adopted to convey the idea of boring; an awl or gimlet better suiting the conditions of the case. Some commentators read ring—this may be illustrated by the ring we see even now frequently in the noses of our bulls. Be this as it may, the reasonable conjecture is, that the same word, conveying the same meaning, is appropriate in all the six places quoted.
It is therefore asked, 1. Why, in the sacred volume, a century ago it should have been spelled grin in the three first-mentioned passages, and gin in the three others? and 2. Why it should have been altered in the three first-quoted verses from grin to gin? In short, if they are cognate words (which the separate use of them in various editions formerly seems to render doubtful), what advantage resulted from changing the word which more familiarly explains itself by the action of the teeth for a much less forcible term?
B. B.