Word.ws English Dictionary

grain

/ɡɹeɪn/

grain noun: the harvested seeds of various grass food crops, especially wheat, maize, rye, barley, and rice.

grain: the harvested seeds of various grass food crops, especially wheat, maize, rye, barley, and rice
Image: Fir0002, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

grain (countable and uncountable, plural grains)

  1. (uncountable) The harvested seeds of various grass food crops, especially wheat, maize, rye, barley, and rice.
    • Near-synonym: corn (broad sense, maize and others)
    • We stored a thousand tons of grain for the winter.
    Synonyms:
    cereal, corn
  2. (uncountable) Similar seeds from any food crop, e.g., buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa.
    • Near-synonym: corn (broad sense, maize and others)
    Synonyms:
    corn
  3. (countable) A single seed of a food crop, especially a cereal grass crop.
    • a grain of wheat
    • grains of oat
    Synonyms:
    corn
  4. The crops from which grain is harvested.
    • The fields were planted with grain.
    • A grain, which in England is generally given to horſes, but which in Scotland ſupports the people.1755 April 15, Samuel Johnson, “Oats”, in A Dictionary of the English Language: […], volume II (L–Z), London: […] J[ohn] and P[aul] Knapton; […], →OCLC, column 1
  5. (uncountable) A linear texture of a material or surface.
    • Cut along the grain of the wood.
    • He doesn't like to shave against the grain.
  6. (countable) A single particle of a substance.
    • a grain of sand
    • a grain of salt
  7. The English grain of ¹⁄₅₇₆₀ troy pound or ¹⁄₇₀₀₀ pound avoirdupois, now exactly 64.79891 mg.
    Synonyms:
    troy grain
  8. The metric, carat, or pearl grain of ¹⁄₄ carat used for measuring precious stones and pearls, now exactly 50 mg.
  9. (historical) The French grain of ¹⁄₉₂₁₆ livre, equivalent to 53.11 mg at metricization and equal to exactly 54.25 mg from 1812–1839 as part of the mesures usuelles.
  10. (countable, historical) Any of various small units of length originally notionally based on a grain's width, variously standardized at different places and times.
  11. (countable, historical) The carat grain of ¹⁄₄ carat as a measure of gold purity, creating a 96-point scale between 0% and 100% purity.
  12. (materials) A region within a material having a single crystal structure or direction.
Show 8 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. The solid piece of fuel in an individual solid-fuel rocket engine.
  2. A reddish dye made from the coccus insect, or kermes; hence, a red color of any tint or hue, as crimson, scarlet, etc.; sometimes used by the poets as equivalent to Tyrian purple.
    • all in a robe of darkest grain1646 (indicated as 1645), John Milton, “Penseroso”, in Poems of Mr. John Milton, […], London: […] Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Mosely, […], →OCLC
    • […] doing as the dyers do, who, having first dipped their silks in colours of less value, then give them the last tincture of crimson in grain.a. 1825, Quoted by Coleridge, preface to Aids to Reflection
  3. The hair side of a piece of leather, or the marking on that side.
    • The grain of the leather is also sometimes damaged by the filling , by the taking off the hair , and by the river work.1773, Royal Dublin Society, The Art of Tanning and of Currying Leather
  4. (in plural) The remains of grain, etc., after brewing or distillation; hence, any residuum.
    Synonyms:
    draff
  5. A rounded prominence on the back of a sepal, as in the common dock.
  6. Temper; natural disposition; inclination.
    • brothers […] not united in graina. 1628 (date written), John Hayward, The Life, and Raigne of King Edward the Sixt, London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press, and J. Lichfield at Oxford?] for Iohn Partridge, […], published 1630, →OCLC
  7. Visual texture in processed photographic film due to the presence of small particles of a metallic silver, or dye clouds, developed from silver halide that have received enough photons.
  8. A tiny fragment of a digital audio recording, used in granular synthesis to create new sounds or textures.

Verb

grain (third-person singular simple present grains, present participle graining, simple past and past participle grained)

  1. (transitive) To feed grain to.
    • He said that no man loved his horses, unless his own hands grained them. Every Christmas he gave them brimming measures.1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities
  2. (transitive) To make granular; to form into grains.
  3. (intransitive) To form grains, or to assume a granular form, as the result of crystallization; to granulate.
  4. To texture a surface in imitation of the grain of a substance such as wood.
  5. To remove the hair or fat from a skin.
  6. To soften leather.
  7. To yield fruit.

Noun (2)

grain (plural grains)

  1. A branch of a tree; a stalk or stem of a plant; an offshoot.
  2. One of the branches of a valley or river.
  3. An iron fish spear or harpoon, with a number of points half-barbed inwardly.
    • Served 5 lb of fish per man which was caught by striking with grains4 May 1770, Stephen Forwood (gunner on H.M. Bark Endeavour), journal (quoted by Parkin (page 195)
  4. A blade of a sword, knife, etc.
  5. An arm of a cross.
  6. (founding) A thin piece of metal, used in a mould to steady a core.
  7. (dialectal) A branch or arm of a stream, inlet, or sea.
  8. (dialectal) A fork in a river valley or ravine.
  9. (dialectal) The branch of a family; clan.
  10. (dialectal) The groin; crotch.
  11. (dialectal) The fangs of a tooth.

Proper noun capitalized: Grain

Grain

  1. A village in Isle of Grain parish, Isle of Grain, Medway borough, Kent, England (OS grid ref TQ8876).
  2. A surname.

grain meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

grain in Hindi

harvested seeds of various grass-related food crops
अनाज anāj, अन्न ann, धान्य dhānya

grain in Tamil

grain
அஃகம் aḥkam, கூலம் kūlam, அக்கம் akkam
grain, cereals
தானியம் tāṉiyam

grain in Marathi

harvested seeds of various grass-related food crops
धान्य dhānya

grain in Urdu

harvested seeds of various grass-related food crops
اناج anāj
single seed of grain
دانہ dāna
More languagesFewer languages
grain in Bengali
শস্য śosśo
grain in Telugu
గింజ giñja
grain in Malayalam
ധാന്യം dhānyaṁ, കൂലം kūlaṁ, തരി tari
grain in Kannada
ಅಗುಳು, ಅವುಡು, ಕಾಳು, ಕುಡುಕು
grain in Punjabi
ਰਵਾ ravā
grain in Gujarati
અનાજ anāj, ધાન dhān
grain in Sanskrit
धान्य dhānya, कण kaṇa
grain in Nepali
दाना dānā
grain in Pashto
دانه dâna
grain in Tagalog
butil, grano
grain in Arabic
حَبَة ḥaba, حُبُوب ḥubūb, تَجْزِيع tajzīʕ, تَعْرِيق taʕrīq
grain in Malay
biji, butir
grain in Persian
غلات ġallât, خرمن xarman, دانه dâne, خواب
grain in Thai
เกรน green, เมล็ด má-lét, ธัญ tan, เม็ด mét
grain in Vietnamese
ngũ cốc, hột, hạt
grain in Myanmar
အဆန် a.hcan, အစေ့ a.ce.

Examples of grain in a sentence

  • We gave three deals of grain in tribute to the king.
  • The reasons for our failure were as uncountable as the grains of sand on a beach.
  • For this job it's best to use wood with a close grain.

All 40 example sentences with grain

Synonyms of grain

Forms of grain

Noun
pluralgrains
alternative formgrane
Verb
third-person singular presentgrains
present participlegraining
past participlegrained
pastgrained

Past tense of grain: grained

Plural of grain: grains

Origin of grain

From Middle English greyn, grayn, grein, from Old French grain, grein, from Latin grānum (“seed”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵr̥h₂nóm (“grain”). Doublet of corn, gram, granum, and grao.

From Middle English grayn, from Old Norse grein (“bough, branch”), from Proto-Germanic *grainiz (“branch, twig, ramification”), of unknown origin. Related to English grove (“thicket”).

Words formed from grain

Phrases with grain

32 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with grain

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about grain

What does grain mean?
Grain means the harvested seeds of various grass food crops, especially wheat, maize, rye, barley, and rice.
What is grain in Hindi?
Grain in Hindi is अनाज (anāj), अन्न (ann), धान्य (dhānya). See Grain meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is grain?
Grain can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce grain?
Grain is pronounced /ɡɹeɪn/.
What is the plural of grain?
The plural of grain is grains.

Words near grain in the dictionary

  1. graille
  2. grailles
  3. grailless
  4. graillike
  5. grails
  6. grain
  7. grain alcohol
  8. grain alcohols
  9. grain beetle
  10. grain beetles
  11. grain boundary

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grain (page history and authors); Grain (page history and authors); அஃகம் (Tamil) (page history and authors); കൂലം (Malayalam) (page history and authors); grain (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਰਵਾ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); અનાજ (Gujarati) (page history and authors); दाना (Nepali) (page history and authors); دانه (Pashto) (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.

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

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