Word Confusion: Grew versus Grue

Posted March 15, 2022 by Kathy Davie in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

This pair of word confusions grew vs grue are a pair of heterographs (a subset of homophone), and while there is a Scottish alternate spelling for grue, which is grew, I doubt the author intended this, per the context. Although, it may have been their choice if spellcheck got upset about grue.

You’ll know grew as a verb meaning to increase whether it’s a plant, a person, a business, or an intellect.

Grue has a surprising number of definitions as an adjective, a noun, and a verb. The first is as a color, although I don’t find it an appealing word to use. It could be useful to describe an object as grue, if you want to put a negative touch to it, lol. As for its noun and verb definitions, most of them boil down to either frightful or gruesome. Even the video game monster is frightful.

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

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Grew	Grue
The House I Grew Up In by Paul VanDerWerf is under the CC BY 2.0 license, via Flickr.	Gachala Emerald by thisisbossi is under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons. — Many consider an emerald to be grue.
Part of Grammar:
Past tense of grow Verb, intransitive Plural for the noun: grow Gerund: growing Third person present verb: grows Past tense: grew Past participle: grown Present participle: growing	Adjective ¹; Noun ², ³; Verb, intransitive ² Plural for the noun: grues Gerund: gruing Third person present verb: grues Past tense or past participle: grued Present participle: gruing
Verb, intransitive: [Of a living thing] Undergo natural development by increasing in size and changing physically Progress to maturity [Of a plant] Germinate and develop Become larger or greater over a period of time Increase Become gradually or increasingly [Of a person] Come to feel or know something over time Verb, transitive: [Of a living thing] Undergo natural development by increasing in size and changing physically Progress to maturity Produce by cultivation Allow or cause (a part of the body) to grow or develop Cause (something, especially a business) to expand or increase	Adjective: A color blend of green and blue ¹ Noun: Particle, bit ² A fit of shivering Gruesome quality or effect [Chiefly Scottish] Thin floating ice Any byproduct of a gruesome event, i.e., gore, viscera, entrails, blood, and guts A fictional predator that dwells in the dark ³ Verb, intransitive: [Chiefly Scottish] To shudder or shiver especially with fear or cold ² To feel strong aversion
Examples:
Verb, intransitive: He would watch Nick grow to manhood. Seaweed grows in the ocean. Turnover grew to more than $100,000 within three years. By sharing our experiences we grew braver. She grew to like the friendly, quiet people at the farm. Verb, transitive: We grew more crops for export as we cultivated more land. She grew her hair long. Entrepreneurs who are struggling to grow their businesses are under stress. She grew her layers out.	Adjective: The dress was the grue sprout of wheat or barley. Is that? Is that a grue suit he’s wearing? The box is grue and yellow, which makes for an interesting combination. Noun: He hasn’t a grue of sense. “The sound of wind in the rigging . . . gave him the chills and the grues.” – R.B. Robertson It was “impossible to read without a certain cold grue.” – S.V. Benét “A mystery novel . . . resolved with true grue.” – Anthony Boucher He “serves the chilliest grue with perfect elegance”. – J.S. Sandoe. The crime scene was strewn with grue. There’s a grue of ice out there. “Zork’s grues fear light and devour human adventurers, making it impossible to explore the game’s dark areas without a light source” (Grue). Verb, intransitive: “Exposed to the gruesome so extensively . . . we simply don’t grue any more.” – John Crosby “If he hadna made use of profane oaths which made my very flesh grue, and caused me, in some sort, to forget myself” (Scott). “People used to grue a lot back in the Middle Ages” (Forsyth).
Derivatives:
Adjective: growable, growing, grown, grown-ass, grown-up Noun: grow-bag, grow-up, grower, grown-up, growth	Adjective: gruesome
Phrasal Verb
grow apart grow away from grow into grow into someone grow into something grow on grow on someone grow out grow out of grow out of something grow out something grow something out grow up
History of the Word:
Old English grōwan (originally referring chiefly to plants), is of Germanic origin and related to the Dutch groeien, also to grass and green.	1955 as a portmanteau word grue, from green and blue. Middle English word dating back to 1275–1325. The term was first used somewhere between 1950 and 1984 to identify a human-bat hybrid predator in the Dying Earth series by Jack Vance.

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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