Chapter Grandmother to Grave as an Owl of G by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Grass Gone to grass. Dead. The allusion is to the grass which grows over the dead. Also, "Gone to rusticate," the allusion being to a horse which is sent to grass when unfit for work.
   Not to let the grass grow under one's feet. To be very active and energetic.

"Captain Cuttle held on at a great pace, and allowed no grass to grow under his feet." - Dickens: Dombey and Son.

   To give grass. To confess yourself vanquished.
   To be knocked down in a pugilistic encounter is to "go to grass;" to have the sack is also to go to grass, as a cow which is no longer fit for milking is sent to pasture.
   A grass-hand is a compositor who fills a temporary vacancy.

Grass Widow was anciently an unmarried woman who has had a child, but now the word is used for a wife temporarily parted from her husband. The word means a grace widow, a widow by courtesy. (In French, veuve de grace; in Latin, viduca de gratia; a woman divorced or separated from her husband by a dispensation of the Pope, and not by death; hence, a woman temporally separated from her husband.)

"Grace-widow (`grass-widow') is a term for one who becomes a widow by grace or favour, not of necessity, as by death. The term originated in the earlier ages of European civilisation, when divorces were granted [only] by authority of the Catholic Church." - Indianopolis News (1876).

    The subjoined explanation of the term may be added in a book of "Phrase and Fable."
   During the gold mania in California a man would not unfrequently put his wife and children to board with some family while he went to the "diggins." This he called "putting his wife to grass," as we put a horse to grass when not wanted or unfit for work.

Grasshopper, as the sign of a grocer, is the crest of Sir Thomas Gresham, the merchant grocer. The Royal Gresham Exchange used to be profusely decorated with grasshoppers, and the brass one on the eastern part of the present edifice is the one which escaped the fires of 1666 and 1838.
    There is a tale that Sir Thomas was a foundling, and that a woman, attracted by the chirping of a grasshopper, discovered the outcast and brought him up. Except as a tale, this solution of the combination is worthless. Gres = grass (Anglo-Saxon, græs), and no doubt grasshopper is an heraldic rebus on the name. Puns and rebuses were at one time common enough in heraldry, and often very far-fetched.

Grasshopper (The). A compound of seven animals. (Anglo-Saxon, græshoppa.)

"It has the head of a horse, the neck of an ox, the wings of a dragon, the feet of a camel, the tail of a serpent, the horns of a stag, and the body of a scorpion." - Caylus: Oriental Tales (The Four Talismans).

Grassmarket At one time the place of execution in Edinburgh.

"I like nane o' your sermons that end in a psalm at the Grassmarket." - Sir Walter Scott: Old Mortality, chap. xxxv.

Grassum or Gersome. A fine in money paid by a lessee either on taking possession of his lease or on renewing it. (Anglo-Saxon, gærsum, a treasure.)

Gratiano Brother of the Venetian senator, Brabantio. (Shakespeare: Othello.)
   Also a character in The Merchant of Venice, who "talks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice." He is one of Bassanio's friends, and when the latter marries Portia, Gratiano marries Nerissa, Portia's maid.

Grave To carry away the meal from the grave. The Greeks and Persians used to make feasts at certain seasons (when the dead were supposed to return to their graves), and leave the fragments of their banquets on the tombs (Eleemosynam sepulcri patris).
   With one foot in the grave. At the very verge of death. The expression was used by Julian, who said he would "learn something even if he had one foot in the grave." The parallel Greek phrase is, "With one foot in the ferry-boat," meaning Charon's.

Grave Solemn, sedate, and serious in look and manner. This is the Latin gravis, grave; but "grave," a place of interment, is the Anglo-Saxon græf, a pit; verb, graf-an, to dig.
   More grave than wise. "Tertius e cælo cecidit Cato."