The grue property is defined as: x is grue if and only if x is green and is observed before the year 2000, or x is blue and is not observed before the year 2000.

The unexamined emeralds cannot be both green and grue, since if they are grue and unexamined they are blue.

One man only worked on the place, a doited lad who had long been a charge to the parish, and who had not the sense to fear danger or the wit to understand it. Upon all others the sight of Alison, were it but for a moment, cast a cold grue, not to be remembered without terror.

There was a sharp grue of ice in the air.

1964, Geoffrey Jenkins, A Grue of Ice (title)

The butcher was covered in the accumulated grue of a hard day's work

There was grue everywhere after the accident

'I've told you - it wasn't much. He tried to kiss me.' She smiled slightly. 'Just after he had shown me the family skeletons.' / 'What a lovely bit of grue!'

Carrie is Cinderella in the body language of menstrual blood and raging hormones. King’s adolescent joy in grimaces and groans, the Mad magazine humor, and the staple of “grue” hardly need mentioning.

2002, Carole Nelson Douglas, Chapel Noir http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=ZZu4sl0P1EAC&pg=PA336&lpg=PA336&sig=dPR0ntE54xw-h3m6fByM0fgJiuc
“… She is quite agreeable to gruesome ghost stories, but appalled by the lust for life.” / “I admit that I am surprised by how well she handles sheer grue, better than I.”

2004, Talbot Mundy, Guns of the Gods http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=PUCcyz2L1iwC&pg=PA244&lpg=PA244&sig=REDDP_txW9FrUWEogxny6lZ4wUo
“This is the grue,” said Dick, holding his lantern high. / Its light fell on a circle of skeletons, all perfect, each with its head toward a brass bowl in the center.

I managed to get into the house through the front once, but I was plunged into darkness and eaten by a monster called a grue.

To find a grue, turn off the light at night, or go for a walk in a dark place (but carry a flashlight with you).

Incidentally, the best official text description I know of is in Sorcerer, when you actually become a grue and visit a grue colony. IIRC, even that description is vague, but does cannonize that they are large four-legged reptiles.

“It is seenteen hundred linen,” said the pedlar, giving a tweak to one of the shirts, in that knowing manner with which matrons and judges ascertain the texture of the loom ; “it’s seenteen hundred linen, and as strong as an it were dowlas. Nevertheless, mother, your bidding is to be done ; and I would have done Mr. Mordaunt’s bidding too,” he added, relaxing from his note of defiance, into the deferential whining tone with which he cajoled his customers, “if he hadna made use of profane oaths which made my very flesh grue, and caused me, in some sort, to forget myself.”

Grue

Meaning

Verb

Noun

Adj

Origin

Related

Rhymes