1895 W. C. Gore in Inlander Nov. 66 Grouch,..a fit of ill-humor.

1900 ‘J. Flynt’ Notes Itinerant Policeman 160 They began to get a grouch on against the gay-cats that kep' comin' to their camps.

1903 Harper's Bazar Oct. 947 No woman who comes down to her breakfast table with what her son frankly calls a ‘grouch on’ is grouchy to herself alone.

1905 N.Y. Evening Post 2 Sept. 4 We need still another breakfast food..one that will take away matutinal grouch.

1906 B. von Hutten What became of Pam i. ii You are not going to spoil my birthday with one of your grouches.

1913 C. E. Mulford Coming of Cassidy iii. 61 Longhorn..felt savage elation at this opportunity to unload quite a cargo of accumulated grouches of various kinds and sizes.

1921 Chambers's Jrnl. Jan. 37/1 He was known there as the Englishman whom Providence had a grouch against.

1940 ‘G. Orwell’ in World Rev. (1950) June 33 Part of his grouch was that he had tried to join the Air Force..and always been put off.

1966 Listener 8 Sept. 355/3 The students were not demonstrating on behalf of a fashionable grouch.

1901 Yale Fun 25 There once was a Princess, whose eyes shone like the stars at the Grand... But her father was a Grouch.

1916 Recruiters' Bull. (U.S. Marine Corps) Apr. 12/2 Why, even the old-fashioned grouch, The biggest in the land, With 29 years' service will On pay~day shake your hand.

1919 H. L. Wilson Ma Pettengill ii. 61 A fifty-five-year-old male grouch..who had been snarling at everyone that came near him ever since the train left New York.

1923 Public Opinion 12 Oct. 361/1 Whether I thought myself a Gentleman or a Grouch..is no part of this Parable.

1957 Listener 10 Oct. 581/1 I am probably a humourless old grouch.

1966 D. Varaday Gara-Yaka's Domain x. 112 Had I been a gipsy palmist I might have paid more attention to the old grouch's lines of life and fate.

1908 K. McGaffey Sorrows of Show Girl xiii. 152 I have met gentlemen who threw the lid of their grouch bag in the gutter and didn't care if they ever found it again.

1914 L. E. Jackson & C. R. Hellyer Vocab. Criminal Slang 39 Grouch bag, a place, as a pocket or receptacle, for concealing money or valuables; a reserve fund held in secret to the exclusion of fraternists.

1956 N. Algren Walk on Wild Side i. 17 Circus roustabouts..took their money out of grouch-bags, pouches drawn by string, like tobacco pouches.

1960 B. Keaton My Wonderful World of Slapstick i. 24 Like every other woman in vaudeville she carried the act's cash in a grouch bag. This was a chamois purse which hung under her dress from a string round her neck.

1969 Telegraph (Brisbane) 6 Dec. 2/2 Groucho..earned his nickname in poker games because he always carried his money in a ‘grouch bag’.

1916 C. J. Dennis Moods of Ginger Mick 133 Grouch, to mope; to grumble.

1925 H. L. Foster Trop. Tramp with Tourists 137 The tourists..all came back to the train at a painfully slow walk,..and grouched all the way home.

1926 J. Black You can't Win viii. 90 ‘Everything's all right now, ain't it?’ ‘Oh, sure,’ he grouched. ‘Everything's all right—just like Denmark.’

1931 H. de V. Stacpoole Pacific Gold ii. i. 99 ‘Now what she grouchin' about?’ asked the Captain.