Doing a repetitive task for a reward — the grind — from MMO levelling into work, gym and life vocabulary: 'the grind never stops'. The record's entry for tedium as a virtue, and the parent of grindset.
You were there or you weren't. I remember the first week of Grinding — 1997, roughly — and the specific feeling that everyone had agreed on a joke overnight without a meeting.
The record notes 'grinding' meant killing the same boar for six hours in 1999 and means answering emails in 2026, and that the boar was, on reflection, more rewarding.
Correction to the headnote: Grinding was not coined, it was noticed. Someone said it, someone else screenshotted it, and the screenshot is the coinage.
What does it mean? Write it the way you would say it out loud.
