Library / English Dictionary

GRUDGE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A resentment strong enough to justify retaliation

Example:

settling a score

Synonyms:

grievance; grudge; score

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Hypernyms ("grudge" is a kind of...):

bitterness; gall; rancor; rancour; resentment (a feeling of deep and bitter anger and ill-will)

Derivation:

grudge (bear a grudge; harbor ill feelings)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Accept or admit unwillingly

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

"Grudge" entails doing...:

resent (feel bitter or indignant about)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Sense 2

Meaning:

Bear a grudge; harbor ill feelings

Synonyms:

grudge; stew

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Hypernyms (to "grudge" is one way to...):

resent (feel bitter or indignant about)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s PP

Derivation:

grudge (a resentment strong enough to justify retaliation)

Credits

 Context examples: 

The relations among the men, strained and made tense by feuds, quarrels and grudges, were in a state of unstable equilibrium, and evil passions flared up in flame like prairie-grass.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The young clerk flushed with pleasure at this chorus of praise, rude and indiscriminate indeed, and yet so much heartier and less grudging than any which he had ever heard from the critical brother Jerome, or the short-spoken Abbot.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The police are of opinion that this outrage may have been perpetrated upon Miss Cushing by these youths, who owed her a grudge and who hoped to frighten her by sending her these relics of the dissecting-rooms.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You may possibly remember that you chaffed me a little, some hours ago, when the sun seemed on your side of the hedge, so you must not grudge me a little pomp and ceremony now.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I'd given one man and thought it too much, while he gave four without grudging them.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

They are useful, these traitors, but I grudge them their blood money.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

How I was, in a grudging way I have no words for, envious of her grief.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

All feuds and grudges were forgotten, and I was surprised at the alacrity with which the men who had so long endured his brutality sprang to execute his orders.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Mr. Yates was particularly pleased: he had been sighing and longing to do the Baron at Ecclesford, had grudged every rant of Lord Ravenshaw's, and been forced to re-rant it all in his own room.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

It was at his own very earnest request that they inscribed He fought the good fight upon his tombstone, and though I cannot doubt that he had Black Bank and Crab Wilson in his mind when he asked it, yet none who knew him would grudge its spiritual meaning as a summing up of his clean and manly life.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)