GRUB STREET • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Grub Street

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/grəb strit/ Listen

noun

Grub n.

(Zool.) The larva of an insect, especially of a beetle; called also grubworm. See Illust. of Goldsmith beetle, under Goldsmith. "Yet your butterfly was a grub."

A short, thick man; a dwarf. (Obs.)

Victuals; food. (Slang)

Grub ax or Grub axe, a kind of mattock used in grubbing up roots, etc.

Grub breaker. Same as Grub hook (below).

Grub hoe, a heavy hoe for grubbing.

Grub hook, a plowlike implement for uprooting stumps, breaking roots, etc.

Grub saw, a handsaw used for sawing marble.

Grub Street, a street in London (now called Milton Street), described by Dr. Johnson as "much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called grubstreet." As an adjective, suitable to, or resembling the production of, Grub Street. "I 'd sooner ballads write, and grubstreet lays."

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Etymology of 'Grub Street'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Grub street" Quotes from Famous Books

... Keats by two years and five months].... The fact is, the Quarterly, finding before it a work at once silly and presumptuous, full of the servile slang that Cockaigne dictates to its servitors, and the vulgar indecorums which that Grub Street Empire rejoiceth to applaud, told the truth of the volume, and recommended a change of manners[14] and of masters to the scribbler. Keats wrote on; but he wrote indecently, probably in the indulgence of ...

— Adonais • Shelley

... had come to London. But it has occurred to me that I can better serve Winwood's reputation by the spilling of ink with a quill than of blood with a sword or pistol. This consideration, which is far from a desire to compete with the young gentlemen who strive for farthings and fame, in Grub Street, is my apology for profaning with my unskilled hand the implement ennobled by the use of a Johnson and a Goldsmith, a Fielding ...

— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... champions: the declared enemies of their order were brave, strong, numerous, and uncompromising. They must meet their foes in the field: they must not be belied and misrepresented by hireling advocates: they must not have Grub Street publishing Gazettes from Whitehall; "that's a dig at Bacon's people, Mr. Bungay," said Shandon, turning round to the publisher. Bungay clapped his stick on the floor. "Hang him, pitch into him, Capting," he said with ...

— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and Gray's "Odes." Though he was no longer "a not unuseful assistant" to Griffiths, he kept up an irregular business association with that literary slave-driver. He also became a contributor to Newbery's "Literary Magazine." At last, in despair, he turned again from the miseries of Grub Street to Dr. Milner's school-room at Peckham, and, after another brief period of teaching, Dr. Milner secured for him the promise of an appointment as medical officer to one of the East India Company's factories on the coast of Coromandel. Partly to utilise his travel experiences in a more ...

— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... insolvent debtor—to obtain liquidation from the Southern planter—was really the soulless and mercenary object of the craven Northerners. Let the common people of England look to this. Let the improvident literary hack, the starved impecunious Grub Street debtor, the newspaper frequenter of sponging- houses, remember this in their criticisms of the vile and ...

— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte