grin [OE] When grin entered English as part of the Old English Germanic inheritance it meant ‘to bare the teeth in pain or anger’, far from the happy expression the word suggests nowadays. This former sense is preserved in the expression grin and bear it [E19th], ‘to suffer pain or misfortune stoically’. An earlier version of the phrase is grin and abide [L18th]. Not until the late 15th century did grin begin to be used for various sorts of smile, developing from a forced, unnatural one, through a rather vacant, silly one, to the cheerful and broad smile we associate with the word today, although the old sense lingered for at least another two centuries. Groan [OE] is related.