groin, to growl; ‘Beares that groynd’, Spenser, F. Q. vi. 12. 27; groyning, murmuring, Turnbull, Expos. James, 202 (NED). ME. groynen, to murmur (Chaucer, C. T. A. 2460). OF. grogner, to grunt, L. grunnire.

groom-porter, an officer of the royal household (till the time of George III); he was privileged to provide gaming-tables, cards, and dice. B. Jonson, Alchemist, iii. 2 (Face); Dryden, Prol. to Don Sebastian, l. 24.

grought, growth, increase. Chapman, tr. of Odyssey, x. 101; xxiii. 289.

ground, the plain-song or melody on which a descant is raised; also, the ground-bass. Richard III, iii. 7. 49; Edw. III, ii. 1. 122; ‘The tenor-part, the treble, and the ground’, B. Jonson, Love’s Welcome at Welbeck, 2 Chorus.

grout, coarse porridge, made with whole meal. Warner, Albion’s England, bk. iv, ch. 20, st. 28. Icel. grautr, porridge.

grout-head, growthead, a blockhead, thickhead. Tusser, Husbandry (ed. 1878, 115); ‘Those Turbanto grout-heads’, Nashe, Lenten Stuffe, 39; ‘Il a une grosse teste, he is a verie blockhead, grouthead, joulthead’, Cotgrave; Urquhart’s Rabelais, I, xxv (Davies). ‘Grout-headed’ (thick-headed) is known in Sussex (EDD.).

groutnoll, a blockhead, thickhead, Beaumont and Fl., Knt. Burning Pestle, ii. 3 (Wife).

growt, great. Middleton, Span. Gipsy, iv. 1 (Sancho’s song). Du. groot, great.

groyle, to move, move forward; ‘He groyleth’ (L. graditur), Stanyhurst, tr. of Aeneid, iii. 678. Hence, groyl, one who is ever on the move, id., iv 179. F. grouiller, ‘to move, stir’ (Cotgr.).

Groyne, the, name given by sailors to Corunna, the sea-port in Spain. De Foe, Rob. Crusoe, I. xix. The name appears in the 14th cent., ‘Vocatur Le Groyne; est in mare ut rostrum porci’, Pol. Poems (Rolls Ser. i. 112). See [groin].