A variant spelling or transliteration (now archaic) of what would be 'gush' or a dialectal word for a sudden rush of liquid; historically also referred to crushed grain or grain debris.
Uncertain origin; possibly a variant of 'gush' (from Middle English and Old Norse 'gusa,' to gush), or related to Old Norse 'grús' meaning sand or grit. The spelling may reflect 19th-century phonetic transcription variations.
Words like 'ghrush' show how English spelling was chaotic before standardization—scribes wrote down sounds phonetically without agreement, and old dictionaries are full of variant spellings that look bizarre to modern readers but made sense to speakers of different dialects.
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