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. [[214]]
1883. Graphic, 17 March, p. 286, c. 3. Many a youngster has got on in his profession … by having the good fortune to make a friend of the old Indian who took him in as a griffin or a stranger.