grunsel

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English gronsell, grounsel, grownsel, variant of groundselle. More at groundsill.

Noun

grunsel (plural grunsels)

1. Obsolete spelling of groundsill.: threshold.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book XVI”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 458–61:

     Next came one
     Who mourn'd in earnest, when the Captive Ark
     Maim'd his brute Image, head and hands lopt off
     In his own Temple, on the grunsel edge,
     Where he fell flat […]

   • 1804, William Herbert, “Sir Ebba”, in Miscellaneous Poems, volume I:

     South beside the altar's ledge
     Fair Zenild drew her knife
     North upon the grunsel edge
     Sir Schinnild lost his life.

Etymology 2

From Middle English grundeswülie. More at groundsel.

Noun

grunsel (countable and uncountable, plural grunsels)

1. Alternative form of groundsel (“any of several species of Senecio, a genus of the daisy family”)
   • 1799, William Wordsworth, The Two-Part Prelude, Book I:

     Basked in the sun, or plunged into thy stream's [1.20]
     Alternate, all a summer's day, or coursed
     Over the sandy fields, and dashed the flowers
     Of yellow grunsel […]

   • 1803, Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, First Week:

     Travelled for some miles along the open country, which was all without hedgerows, sometimes arable, sometimes moorish, and often whole tracts covered with grunsel.

   • 1845, Thomas Cooper, The Purgatory of Suicides, Book the Fourth, Stanza IX:

     If thou return not, Gammer o'er her pail
     evermore the petlings, with sad brow,
     Will look for thee upon the holly bough,
     Where thou didst chirp thy signal note, ere on
     The lowly grunsel thou didst light […]

   • 1841–1864, John Clare, "We passed by green closes" (one of the "Knight Transcripts", copied from Clare's manuscript poems written while he was involuntarily confined at the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum):

     Blue skippers in sunny hours ope and shut

     Where wormwood and grunsel flowers by the cart ruts […]

   • 1894, Frederic Morrell Holmes, Some Unfasionable Slums: Second Round—South London, in The Quiver: The Illustrated Magazine for Sunday and General Reading::

     "Yes; Messrs. So-and-so lets me go in their grounds and get the bird-seed. Yer see, I got grun'sel here, and plantain and chick-weed"

Anagrams

• Lungers, lungers