grub around

grub around

1. To search for someone or something. I'm in the art closet, grubbing around for some old paints for the kids to use. The pigs are always grubbing around for scraps.
2. To wear unattractive clothing that is old, shabby, and possibly dirty. It's a Sunday afternoon, so I'm just grubbing around in some old sweats
See also: around, grub
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

grub around (in something)

to wear old or "grubby" clothes around. I was grubbing around in my jeans when Alice showed up. I was wearing my jeans and just sort of grubbing around when she came.
See also: around, grub

grub around

(for someone or something) to search around for someone or something. I went to the attic and grubbed around for my old uniform. The guys went out and grubbed around for another soccer player.
See also: around, grub
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • gaze around at (someone or something)
  • find way around
  • crowd around
  • crowd around (someone or something)
  • bomb around
  • collect around
  • collect around (someone or something)
  • cluster
  • cluster around
  • cluster around (someone or something)
References in periodicals archive
Picking a swim and making up groundbait to get a bed of pellets and scent down is always a buzz on a new river, with the small particles giving them something to grub around on hopefully drawing them in to your hookbait.
MINISTERS and their staff are being fed the best food available thanks to taxpayer subsidies - while schools and hospitals are having to serve the cheapest grub around.
Amid much hilarity, wild boar, they explained, were very canny creatures and would not be put off by music or voices, if they were going to grub around in a corn field.
Feed the birds - there's not a lot of grub around at the moment for them so fill up the bird feeders this weekend.
Upper-slot reds will prefer a rougher, oyster-laden bottom and slightly less current, so they can freely grub around for a crustacean or two.
It has been brought bang up to date by dishing up some of the best pub grub around.
Sawfish use their spectacular and highly sensitive rostra (saws) to grub around on the bottom for invertebrates, and to slash at schools of prey fish such as mullet and herring.
One in particular serves the best grub around, but I'll be damned if I'm going to give you directions to Nick's place, or I'll be 100-1 against to get a table myself next year.
He was renowned for his sharp intellect, but what made him unusual as an administrator was that he did not grub around for votes come re-election time - that he always topped the poll was down to his reputation for getting things done.
Probably because you don't have to grub around in the brush looking for the lost shot from your shells.
For around a tenner a head, you can dip into Antoine's or Arnaud's for the beguiling memory of some of the best lip-smacking grub around.
They are willing to grub around in the real world when they think it necessary.
Abstract, highfalutin ideas are for philosophers, but we grub around in the stuff of daily life.
What was missing in 1810 was a sharp lawyer prepared to grub around without fear or favour.
He started his quest in April and has written 33 reviews of the grub around Glasgow and on his travels in London and New York.