Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also grub out, grub up) to eat; thus grub and bub, to eat and drink.

1700		‘The Politick Club’ in Playford Pills to Purge Melancholy II 277: A Country Bumpkin that Trees did grub.
1724		‘Frisky Moll’s Song’ in J. Thurmond Harlequin Sheppard 22: I Frisky Moll, with my rum coll, / Wou’d Grub in a bowzing ken; / But ere for the scran he had tipt the cole, / The Harman he came in.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
a.1790		‘The Flash Man of St. Giles’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 75: We live in pefect harmony, / And grub and bub our fill.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1819		‘One of the Fancy’ Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress 28: What with snoozing, high grubbing, and guzzling like Cloe, / Your Majesties, pardon me, all get so doughy.
1833		‘The Chummies’ Society’ in Fun Alive O! 54: They grubb’d well at all they could get.
1840		‘The St Giles’s Flash Man’ in Facetious Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 250: We live in perfect harmony, / [A]nd grub and bub our fill.
1848		Thackeray Vanity Fair III 258: Seeing these nobs grubbing away has made me peckish too.
1853		T. Haliburton Sam Slick’s Wise Saws I 137: Here’s where we grub.
1861		Vanity Fair (N.Y.) 28 Sept. 153: Next week it will probably be announced that the Empress Eugenie has been to the opera with a few of the Old Imperial ‘Cove’s Pals,’ and that the latter ‘grubbed’ with her, after the performance, at the Royal ‘crib’.
1876		C. Hindley Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack 192: They would be so busy all day at the fair there would be no time to think of grubbing.
1882		W.A. Baillie-Grohman Camps in the Rockies 46: We lived exclusively, or, as the phrase is, ‘grubbed straight,’ on bread and coffee.
1898		Binstead & Wells Pink ’Un and Pelican 174: Tonight I’ve promised to grub with Freddy Pulman.
1902		O. Wister Virginian 184: Oh, let’s grub first.
1913		P. Macgill ‘Padding It’ Songs of the Dead End 40: Hashing it out like a nigger on a two and a tanner sub, [...] grubbed on a sausage roll.
1925		D. Hammett ‘Corkscrew’ Story Omnibus (1966) 198: You can grub up at the Toad’s — if you ain’t particular.
1953		B. Stronach Musterer on Molesworth 4: Once I saw our packman [...] grubbing gorse.
1967		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 52: I doned on reefers and grubbed on dope.
1971		H.E. Roberts Third Ear n.p.: grub v. to eat voraciously.
1982		Eble Campus Sl. Fall 3: grub [...] grub out – to eat.
1997–2000		Da Bomb 🌐 14: Grubbing out: Indulging in food.
1999		R. Jacobs in San Jose Mercury News 11 May n.p.: Grubbing (v) – Eating. I was grubbing when Laura called.
2007		N. McCall Them (2008) 14: He [...] took the pork chops off the stove. [...] ‘C’mon, Unk. Lez grub and go ride.’.

2. to provide with food.

1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang. in McLachlan (1964) 244: To grub a person, is to diet him, or find him in victuals.
1825		Caledonian Mercury 13 June 3/4: Now-and-then stopping to grub the prads or sluice the ivories with some Adam’s ale.
1836–7		Dickens Pickwick Papers (1999) 291: I never see such a chap to eat and drink — never. The red-nosed man warn’t by no means the sort of person you’d like to grub by contract, but he was nothin’ to the shepherd.
1850		Bell’s Life in Sydney 6 July 2/7: May you never [...] be grubbed upon measly pork and weevily Tommy.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor III 78/2: I pay my men [...] besides lodge, clean and grub him.
1877		J. Greenwood Dick Temple II 263: I’ll grub you, lodge you, and find you clothes.
1888		‘’Arry on Marriage’ in Punch 29 Sept. 156/1: You remember Bob Binks — a rare dasher [...] / Now he ’as to grub seven, all told, and he ain’t five years older than me.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1902		DN II 236: Grub yersef [...] To eat. Used facetiously.
1929		E. Dahlberg Bottom Dogs 230: They were just like a lot of kids you took the trouble of bringing into the world and grubbin’ them till they were old enuf to be caring for themselves.

3. to beg, to scrounge; thus on the grub.

1859		Wkly Varieties (Boston, MA) 3 Sept. 6/1: [H]anging around the Music Hall, trying either to ‘grub a cheek,’ or to sneak in.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 4 Apr. 13/2: A correspondent from Casino says: ‘We Casinoites are not of the grubbing sort.’.
1891		W. De Vere ‘Roger’ Tramp Poems 17: Grubbin’ like blazes to keep up His end, in some cursed hard times.
1908		K. McGaffey Sorrows of a Show Girl Ch. xiii: Me grub, and I got money in the bank? Sure I do. I got to keep in training somehow.
1936		A.E. Duckett ‘Truckin ’round Brooklyn’ in N.Y. Age 26 Sept. 7/1: ‘Now you can buy yourself a pack of cigarettes instead of grubbing so much’.
1947		W.D. Overholser Buckaroo’s Code (1948) 35: I told June I didn’t want no money-grubbers like Jackson Malloy marrying into the Flagg family.
1958		Murtagh & Harris Cast the First Stone 123: You spent all week grubbing for your food and shelter and looked for sex in between the grubbing.
1964		H. Selby Jr Last Exit to Brooklyn 67: He sat back quickly, took a drink and grubbed a smoke from Harry.
1997		H.S. Thompson in Proud Highway 320: Thompson first met free-lance journalist Olay in Big Sur when they were both broke and grubbing for money.

4. to scavenge.

1880

R. Rowe Picked Up in the Streets 74: [a bone-grubber] I’ve been grubbing for many a year now.