Gridiron, subs. (American).—1. The United States’ flag; the Stars and Stripes. Also Stars and Bars; Blood and Entrails; Gridiron and Doughboys; and, in speaking of the Eagle in conjunction with the flag, the Goose and Gridiron. 2. (common).—A County Court Summons. [Originally applied to Writs of the Westminster Court, the arms of which resemble a gridiron.] 1859. Sala, Gaslight and Daylight, ch. xxi. He collects debts for anybody in the neighbourhood, takes out the abhorred gridirons, or County Court summonses. 3. (thieves’).—The bars on a cell window. Fr., les gaules de Schtard. The Gridiron, subs. phr. (common).—The Grafton Club. [Where the grill is a speciality.] On the Gridiron, adv. phr. (common).—Troubled; harassed; in a bad way; on toast (q.v.). The Whole Gridiron, subs. phr. (common).—See Whole Animal. Grief, To Come to Grief, verb. phr. (colloquial).—To come to ruin; to meet with an accident; to fail. In quot., 1891 = trouble. 1855. Thackeray, Newcomes, ch. x. We drove on to the Downs, and we were nearly coming to grief. My horses are young, and when they get on the grass they are as if they were mad. 1888. Cassell’s Saturday Jour., 8 Dec., p. 249. In the United States he had started a ‘Matrimonial Agency,’ in which he had come to grief, and he had been obliged to return to this country for a similar reason. 1891. Sportsman, 28 Feb. The flag had scarcely fallen than the grief commenced, as Midshipmite and Carlo rolled over at the first fence, Clanranald refused at the second, and Dog Fox fell at the third. Griffin (or Griff), subs. (common).—1. A new-comer; a raw hand; a Greenhorn (q.v.) See Snooker and Sammy Soft. [Specific uses are (Anglo-Indian) = a new arrival from Europe; (military) = a young subaltern; (Anglo-Chinese) = an unbroken horse.] Griffinage (or Griffinism) = the state of greenhornism. 1859. H. Kingsley, Geoffry Hamlyn, ch. xxviii. All the griffins ought to hunt together. 1878. Besant and Rice, By Celia’s Arbour, ch. xxx. We were in the Trenches; there had been joking with a lot of griffs, young recruits just out from England. 1882. Miss Braddon, Mount Royal, ch. xxii. There was only one of the lads about the yard when he left, for it was breakfast-time, and the little griffin didn’t notice. 1883. Graphic, 17 March, p. 286, c. 3. Many a youngster has got on in his profession ... by having the good fortune to make a friend of the old Indian who took him in as a griffin or a stranger. 2. (colloquial).—A woman of forbidding manners or appearance; a Gorgon. Also a caretaker, chaperon, or sheep-dog (q.v.) [A reflection of the several griffins of ornithology and of heraldry: the former a feeder on birds, small mammals, and even children; the latter (as in Milton) a perfection of vigilance.] 1824. R. B. Peake, Americans Abroad, i., 2. It is always locked up by that she-griffin with a bunch of keys.