different between gricer vs grice

English

Etymology

From grice, supposed plural of grouse (on analogy to mouse/mice), likening a person who identifies railway locomotives to a sportsman who bags grouse.

Noun

gricer (plural gricers)

1. (informal) A railway enthusiast, a trainspotter.
   • 1981 December 10, Feedback, New Scientist, Volume 92, Issue 1283, page 723,

     The train was stuffed full of journalists and gricers, as railway enthusiasts are pejoratively termed. Some of the gricers, earnest, fresh-faced young men, almost to a person, who cut their milk teeth on Hornby trains, had booked on this train two years ago.

Synonyms

• (railway enthusiast): ferroequinologist, gunzel, railfan, trainspotter

Related terms

• grice

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /????s/

Etymology 1

From Middle English gris, from Old Norse gríss.

Noun

grice (plural grice or grices)

1. (now Scotland) A pig, especially a young pig, or its meat; sometimes specifically, a breed of wild pig or boar native to Scotland, now extinct.
   • 1641, Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd

     This fine Smooth bawson cub, the young grice of a gray

   • 1728, Robert Lindsay, The history of Scotland, from 21 February, 1436. to March, 1565: in which are contained accounts of many remarkable passages altogether differing from our other historians, and many facts are related, either concealed by some, or omitted by others, publ. Mr. Baskett and Company, pg.146:

     Further, there was of meats wheat bread, main-bread and ginge-bread with fleshes, beef, mutton, lamb, veal, venison, goose, grice, capon, coney, cran, swan, partridge, plover, duck, drake, brissel-cock and pawnies, black-cock and muir-fowl, cappercaillies;

   • 1789, William Thomson, Mammuth: or, human nature displayed on a grand scale: in a tour with the tinkers, into the inland parts of Africa. By the man in the moon. In two volumes. publ. G. and T. Wilkie, pg.105:

     Through a door to one of the galleries, left half open on purpose I was attracted to a dainty hot supper, consisting of stewed mushrooms and the fat paps and ears of very young pigs, or, as they call them, grice.

   • 2006, "Extinct island pig spotted again," BBC News, 17 November 2006, [1]:

     A model of the grice - which was the size of a large dog and had tusks - has been created after work by researchers and a taxidermist.

Etymology 2

Unknown, possibly from Richard Grice, the first champion trainspotter[2], alternatively perhaps a humorous representation of an upper-class pronunciation of grouser (“grouse-shooter”)[3]. In either case the derivation could be direct or a back-formation from gricer.

Verb

grice (third-person singular simple present grices, present participle gricing, simple past and past participle griced)

1. (Britain, rail transport, slang) to act as a trainspotter; to partake in the activity or hobby of trainspotting.

Related terms

• gricer

Etymology 3

Noun

grice (plural grices)

1. (obsolete) A gree; a step.
   • 1612, Ben Jonson, Love Restored

     he stood under the grices

Anagrams

• -ergic

Scots

Etymology

From Old Norse gríss.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?r?is/

Noun

grice (plural grices)

1. pig, piglet
   • 1817, Walter Scott, Rob Roy:

     ‘Sae, an it come to the warst, I'se een lay the head o' the sow to the tail o' the grice.’