grudging

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 14, 2009 is: grudging • \GRUH-jing\ • adjective 1 : unwilling, reluctant 2 : done, given, or allowed unwillingly, reluctantly, or sparingly Examples: Lydia's father greeted her new boyfriend with a rather cold and grudging handshake. Did you know? More than five hundred years have passed since English jurist Sir John Fortescue observed, "Somme . . . obtayne gretter rewardis than thei have disserved, and yit grugge, seying they have [too] litill." Fortescue's "grugge" (an early spelling of the verb "grudge") meant "to grumble and complain," just like its Middle English forerunner, "grucchen," and the Anglo-French word "grucer," which gave rise to the English forms. English speakers had adopted the "complaining" sense of "grudge" by the late 1400s, and by 1500 they had added the extended sense "reluctant." That second sense may have developed because people associated "grudge" with the related word "begrudge" (meaning "to give reluctantly"). "Grudging," which developed from "grudge," made its English debut around 1533. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.