Definition of "girn"

girn

/ɡɜː(ɹ)n/

verb
third-person singular simple present girns, present participle girning, simple past and past participle girned
1. (dialectal) To grimace; to snarl.
  Quotations
  At seventy-five or eighty I will be like a child myself, frail and cantankerous, a girning, burdensome old devil.
  1999, Jessica Stirling, The Wind from the Hills, St Martin's Press
2. (Scotland, Northern England) To whinge, moan, complain.
  Quotations
  And Jim was just girning all the time. I telled him to shut it.
  2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin, published 2009, page 107
3. (intransitive) To make elaborate unnatural and distorted faces as a form of amusement or in a girning competition.
noun
plural girns
1. A vocalization similar to a cat's purring.
  Quotations
  A different vocalization, a girn, simiular to a cat's purring, was observed in infants reunited with their mothers...
  2002, Richard J. Davidson, editor, Handbook of Affective Sciences, Oxford: University Press, page 569