grade

/ɡɹeɪd/UK[ɡɹeɪd]

grade noun: a rating.

Noun

grade (plural grades)

A rating.
- This fine-grade coin from 1837 is worth a good amount.
- prime grade beef
(Canada, Philippines, US) Performance on a test or other evaluation(s), expressed by a number, letter, or other symbol; a score.
- He got a good grade on the test.
- I gave him a good grade for effort.
Synonyms:

mark
A degree or level of something; a position within a scale; a degree of quality.
- There are a lot of varieties of diatomaceous earth, so when you are shopping, be sure to get the right stuff! Make sure that you get food grade diatomaceous earth. Some people make 3% of the food they eat be diatomaceous earth.1986–2012, paul wheaton permaculture, “Diatomaceous Earth (food grade): bug killer you can eat!”, in richsoil.com, retrieved 17 Mar 2014
Degree (any of the three stages (positive, comparative, superlative) in the comparison of an adjective or an adverb).
A slope (up or down) of a roadway or other passage
- The grade of this hill is more than 5 percent.
- The incline can be altered to any grade so as to suit the weight of the door or gate to which the butt is attached.1847, editorial staff, “Improved Adjustable Incline Door and Gate Butt”, in Scientific American, series 1, Volume 3, Issue 9, page 68
Synonyms:

gradient
(Canada, Philippines, US) A level of primary and secondary education.
- Clancy is entering the fifth grade this year.
- Clancy starts grade five this year.
(Canada) A student of a particular grade (used with the grade level).
- The grade fives are on a field trip.
An area that has been flattened by a grader (construction machine).
The level of the ground.
- This material absorbs moisture and is probably not a good choice for use below grade.
A gradian.
In a linear system of divisors on an n-dimensional variety, the number of free intersection points of n generic divisors.
A harsh scraping or cutting; a grating.
- The whistle of the shot as it cuts the leaves / Of the maples around the church’s eaves— / And the grade of hatchets, fiercely thrown, / On wigwam-log, and tree, and stone.1836, John Greenleaf Whittier, Mogg Megone, A Poem, →OCLC

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(systematics) A taxon united by a level of morphological or physiological complexity that is not a clade.

Synonyms:

paraphyletic group
The degree of malignity of a tumor expressed on a scale.
(Philippines) An eyeglass prescription.

Verb

grade (third-person singular simple present grades, present participle grading, simple past and past participle graded)

(Canada, US) To assign scores to the components of an academic test, or to overall academic performance.
To organize in grades.
- a graded reader
To flatten, level, or smooth a large surface, especially with a grader.
- to grade land before building on it
- The shoulders are graded and the verges cleared well back to lessen the chances of hitting stray stock.2000, Bob Foster, Birdum or Bust!, Henley Beach, SA: Seaview Press, page 129
To remove or trim part of a seam allowance from a finished seam so as to reduce bulk and make the finished piece more even when turned right side out.
To increase or decrease the dimensions of a garment pattern from the initial base size in such a way that the overall proportions of the silhouette are maintained across all sizes.
To apply classifying labels to data (typically by a manual rather than automatic process).
- Brain scans were graded on a five-point scale of atrophy.
To describe, modify or inflect so as to classify as to degree.
- He has rightly observed that while -ísimo superlatives are typically prenominal, adjectives graded with the intensifier muy "very" are characteristically postnominal.1999, Jon Franco, Alazne Landa, Juan Martín, Grammatical Analyses in Basque and Romance Linguistics: Papers in Honor of Mario Saltarelli, John Benjamins Publishing, →ISBN, page 65
- Adjectives graded for comparative and superlative degree can function both attributively and predicatively. Most descriptive adjectives are gradable: As modifiers of a noun Have you got a larger size? […]2014, Angela Downing, English Grammar: A University Course, Routledge, →ISBN, page 430
(intransitive) To pass imperceptibly from one grade into another.
- And there were circles even beyond these – […] humanity grading and drifting beyond the educated vision, until no earthly invitation can embrace it.1924, EM Forster, A Passage to India, Penguin, published 2005, page 34
(Canada, dated, intransitive) To pass from one school grade into the next.
- I graded out of grade two and three and arrived in Miss Hanson's room.

grade meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

grade in Hindi

performance expressed by a number, letter, or other symbol: अंक aṅk, ग्रेड greḍ
degree or level of something: स्तर star
slope of a roadway or other passage: ढाल ḍhāl
level of pre-collegiate education: दर्जा darjā, ग्रेड greḍ, श्रेणी śreṇī

grade in Urdu

level of pre-collegiate education: دَرْجَہ darja

grade in Bengali

শ্রেণী, মান, পদমর্যাদা, ত্তজন, ক্রম, বিদ্যালয়ের পাঠশ্রেণী

More languagesFewer languages

grade in Telugu: గ్రేడ్
grade in Malayalam: കിട kiṭa, പദവി padavi
grade in Kannada: ಹಂತ, ಮಟ್ಟ, ದರ್ಜೆ, ವರ್ಗ
grade in Punjabi: ਗ੍ਰੇਡ, ਗਰੇਡ
grade in Gujarati: ધોરણ dhoraṇ
grade in Odia: ଗ୍ରେଡ୍
grade in Nepali: कक्षा kakṣā
grade in Pashto: نومره nomra, درجه daraja
grade in Tagalog: halgambilang
grade in Arabic: دَرَجَة daraja
grade in Malay: gred, darjah, tahun, tingkatan
grade in Indonesian: kelas
grade in Thai: คะแนน ká-nɛɛn, ระดับ rá-dàp, ชั้น chán
grade in Vietnamese: điểm, lớp, cấp
grade in Myanmar: အမှတ် a.hmat, အတန်း a.tan:

Examples of grade in a sentence

In the UK, the highest social grade is A – upper middle class.
The student received a failing grade for circling every true and false on her quiz.
The teacher was nice and graded the test on a curve.

All 40 example sentences with grade

Synonyms of grade

mark
gradient
paraphyletic group

Forms of grade

Noun
plural	grades
Verb
third-person singular present	grades
present participle	grading
past participle	graded
past	graded

Past tense of grade: graded

Plural of grade: grades

Origin of grade

Borrowed from Middle French grade (“a grade, degree”), from Latin gradus (“a step, pace, degree”), from Proto-Italic *graðus, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰradʰ-, *gʰredʰ- (“to walk, go”). Doublet of gradus. Cognate with Gothic 𐌲𐍂𐌹𐌸𐍃 (griþs, “step, grade”), Bavarian Gritt (“step, stride”), Lithuanian gri̇̀diju (“to go, wander”).

Words formed from grade

Phrases with grade

60 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with grade

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about grade

What does grade mean?: Grade means a rating.
What is grade in Hindi?: Grade in Hindi is अंक (aṅk), ग्रेड (greḍ), स्तर (star). See Grade meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is grade?: Grade can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce grade?: Grade is pronounced /ɡɹeɪd/.
What is the plural of grade?: The plural of grade is grades.

Words near grade in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: grade (page history and authors); grade (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); grade (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); grade (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); കിട (Malayalam) (page history and authors); grade (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); grade (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); grade (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); कक्षा (Nepali) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-grade.ogg.

Cite this entry: “grade.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grade. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.