Merriam-Webster Word of the Day - Grudging

WORD OF THE DAY April 21, 2018

grudging    adjective | GRUH-jing     Definition   1 : unwilling, reluctant   2 : done, given, or allowed unwillingly, reluctantly, or sparingly   Scroll down for more about grudging      TRENDING NOW: lowlife kakistocracy slimeball salacious SEE ALL      PEOPLE ARE READING   Going Greek: 7 Words from the Greek Alphabet     'Preventive' or 'Preventative'?     Words We're Watching: 'Bluebeard,' the Verb     Where 'Cliff-hangers' Come From         WORD GAMES AND QUIZZES: WEEKLY CHALLENGE   Odd Habits and Quirks Quiz   Test your knowledge of strange human behaviors.     PLAY NOW     Nailed this quiz? We have plenty more to try!  TAKE ME THERE         Did You Know?   In the 15th century, English jurist Sir John Fortescue observed, "Somme . . . obtayne gretter rewardis than thei have disserved, and yit grugge, seying they have [too] litill." Fortescue's grugge (an early spelling of the verb grudge) meant "to grumble and complain," just like its Middle English forerunner, grucchen, and the Anglo-French word grucer, which gave rise to the English forms. English speakers had adopted the "complain" sense of grudge by the late 13th century, and a century later they had added the extended sense "to give reluctantly." That second sense may have developed because people associated grudge with the related word begrudge (meaning "to give reluctantly," as in "I begrudged him a second chance.") Grudging, which developed from grudge, made its English debut in the 1530s.     Examples of GRUDGING   "The class differences between teacher and students are so pronounced that they threaten to plunge the film into a schoolhouse drama—that well-worn genre in which a charismatic authority figure, inevitably likable yet inevitably tough, gains her students' grudging respect and eventual trust." — Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times, 22 Mar. 2018   "There is no grudging marriage of art and politics in her work; as John Berger, one of her longtime interlocutors and a formative influence, wrote, 'Far from my dragging politics into art, art has dragged me into politics.' [Arundhati] Roy's work conveys a similar spirit." — Parul Sehgal, The Atlantic, 17 June 2017   Test Your Vocabulary   Fill in the blanks to complete a noun that can refer to a grudge or complaint or to a person who habitually complains: _ r _ _ ch.   VIEW THE ANSWER           ATTENTION CROSSWORD PUZZLE LOVERS     Sharpen your word game!   Our latest edition features 340,000 clues and answer words and 20,000 new words, including: freegan, goji, pho, and tweep!   LEARN MORE            MORE WORD FUN:     WORD GAMES         TRENDING NOW         WORDS AT PLAY