DCHP-1 Online

grizzly [< grizzle gray + -ly]

• 1 n. a large and, often, ferocious bear, Ursus horribilis, nowadays largely confined to the northern Rockies.

  See also: grizzly bear  

  • 1854  I've seed a grizzly pull down as good a hoss as ever tracked a prairy, where the critter had got bothered in a thicket.
  • 1963  We watched a huge grizzly root up the sod and tear a mound of solid rock to pieces to catch a groundsquirrel or a whistler.

• 2 n. the meat of the grizzly bear.

  • 1937  (1950)  And we traded flour and sugar which he wanted for some dry old moose meat and a piece of tough, but delicious, frozen grizzly.

• 3a † n. Placer Mining See 1966 quote.

  • 1881  The boiler and force pumps are on a scow and the "grizzly" on a raft close by, and the whole aparatus can be easily floated from one part of the river to another.
  • 1966  There are many different rigs . . . but perhaps the one that has best stood the test of time is the grizzly. It evolved from the old rocker, which the Chinese introduced to the Western world during the California gold rush.

• 3b † n. Placer Mining See grizzly head quote.

  See also: grizzly head  

  • 1881  The dirt is shovelled into the dump box and water is poured on it, which washes it on the grizzley, and into and through the sluice box, the gold catching on the blanket as it passes through.
  • 1963  A grizzly is a set of parallel steel bars or rails, or even poles, set in a 2- by 4-inch rack. . . .

• 4 † n. Hardrock Mining a screening device, usually a grid, of steel bars on which ore or rock is broken by means of a sledge hammer.

  • 1955  GRIZZLY--a grating (usually steel rails) placed over the top of a chute or ore pass for the purpose of stopping the larger pieces of rock or ore.
  • 1964  The grizzlyman breaks up rock by hammering on a steel grid known as a grizzly.