Idioms

gruff

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(redirected from gruffly)

(as) gruff as a bear

Surly or brusque. Don't take it personally, Gordon is gruff as a bear with everyone. Try talking to Lauren later in the day—she can be as gruff as a bear before she's had her morning coffee. Mr. Stewart may seem gruff as a bear, but he's really nice—he's actually helped me carry my groceries many times.
See also: bear, gruff
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

*gruff as a bear

gruff; curt and unsociable. (*Also: as ∼.) I hate to ask Erica questions; she's always gruff as a bear. I'm always as gruff as a bear before I've had my first cup of coffee.
See also: bear, gruff
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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References in periodicals archive
"Give the footwear you took back," I said gruffly, as Vinnie Jones might have done.
The glossy open-air trade centre plaza between Shaikh Saeed Hall 3 and the Dubai Trade Centre Hotel Apartments is teeming with tired-looking shoppers taking a hard-earned break - some off to a quick drag on a cigarette while desperately holding on to the bulk of their electronic conquests, some racing against time to finish the burger, gruffly resting on a 50" LED TV box.
Abigail McKern shines as the nurse; and, fresh from his Tony-nommed turn as Maria in the Globe's "Twelfth Night," Paul Chahidi returns to the Elizabethan era to make a delightfully exasperated mountain out of the molehill that is Henslowe, the theater owner who badly needs Shakespeare to stop indulging himself with writer's block and give him an audience-pleasing, coffer-filling comedy, preferably with a dog, since Queen Elizabeth (a gruffly imperious Anna Carteret) is partial to them.
John Krasinski gave his facial features a workout when he mugged for the camera on "The Office,'' and Ice Cube has been gruffly scowling at countless fast-talking buffoons in his movie comedies.
"Ten minutes," he said gruffly, and my brother and I grinned, pushing back our enormous black-and-white chairs and running toward the marimbas.
During an interview Saber Rebai gave from Lebanon where he was performing at the Lebanese Balbeck Music Festival, he gruffly denied
SHOWBIZ GRUFFLY spoken star Dennis Waterman has traded for years on his image as a hardman.
One was told gruffly to queue up with the rest of the crowd and waste a lot of time and energy.
"No Manipur chilli allowed," a policeman said gruffly.
He saluted - with his left hand - to the public gallery at the start of the hearing and gruffly told Judge Orie he did not want "a single letter or sentence" of his indictment read in court.
Once in the parish office I observed an impoverished woman asking for help being rebuffed gruffly as a nuisance by an associate pastor.
Joe Friday, another famous police character from the old television show "Dragnet." He was famous for gruffly reminding his sources, "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts!"
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