An old person or someone with gray hair; an archaic or dialectal term for an elderly person.
From Old French gris (gray) combined with -ard suffix (denoting a person with a characteristic). Related to the visual sign of aging through gray hair.
Language evolution shows how people named things by their most obvious feature—gray hair was so strongly associated with age that 'gray-person' became a word for elderly folk.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.