Thing Not To Do Today: grizzle.

Photo by BadgerHero

You get two slightly depressing words for the price of one with grizzle.

To grizzle means to become grey, and if anything's going to be grizzled it's probably beard. I think this may be because beards are often frizzy, and you get a sort of echo of the frizz when you hear the word grizzle.

A grizzle can also be a grey wig, but hardly anyone knows this. 

And how about the other slightly depressing grizzle? It's a British word used to describe sulking, whining, or perhaps sobbing, in the most annoying, quite possibly fake, and probably attention-seeking, way. It's almost exclusively used to children in the phrase stop grizzling!

Luckily grizzling is a ploy people almost always abandon as they get older.

Which means that the two grizzles can exist quite unhappily side by side.

Thing Not To Do Today: grizzle. The grey word comes from the Old French grisel, from gris, grey, and before that it was probably German. The whining word also came from a German language. There's a nice German word Griesgram, which means unpleasant person.