gurn
/ɡəːn
/(also girn)
verb [no object]
1British Pull a grotesque face.Some people gurn and grimace and pull strange faces whenever a camera is waved near them, as if being caught without making a face would be somehow sneaky....
- With her pointy-witch proboscis, she gurns and sneers at her audience like a ringmaster gripped by mad cow disease.
- There's no sound, just a face looking down, as though into a toilet or a bowl of water, gurning and grimacing.
2 (usually girn) chiefly Scottish & Irish Complain peevishly.We are sleepwalking through a consumerist theme-park, girning about the government....
- Although what he's got to girn about is anyone's guess.
- Instead of girning about Westminster we girn about Holyrood.
Derivatives
gurner
- If you're voted as gurner of the month by those nice sane folk on the internet, you'll receive a Cumbrian facial pack (two slices of cucumber and some Lake District mud).
- These outsiders have provided a wholly different perspective from our home-grown whingers and girners.
- What this makes them I'm not sure, since they seem to spend an awful lot of time in their metropolitan bolt-holes girning about girners.
Origin
Early 20th century: dialect variant of grin.