To prepare or dress in a particular way; archaic usage for to arrange or to grease.
Possibly a variant or archaic form related to 'grease' or from Old English/Norse roots; exact etymology uncertain, though it may be related to 'grees' or a past participle form.
Many English words have variant spellings that disappeared—'greese' versus 'grease' shows how spelling standardization happened relatively recently, before which writers spelled creatively!
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