Word.ws English Dictionary

graith

/ɡɹeɪθ/

graith verb: to make ready; prepare; put in order; make fit for use.

Verb

graith (third-person singular simple present graiths, present participle graithing, simple past and past participle graithed)

  1. (Scotland, obsolete) To make ready; prepare; put in order; make fit for use.
    • Gowden graith'd his horse before, and siller shod behind […]1776, David Herd, Collected Songs (reprinted in 1870 as Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs)
    • And graith my horse!1802, Walter Scott, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
  2. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) To dress (someone or oneself) or be dressed.
    • At fairs he play'd before the spearmen, All gaily graithed in their gear-men.1748, “The Life and Death of the Piper of Kilbarchan; or, the epitaph of Habbie Simson”, in Poems in the Scottish Dialect by several celebrated Poets, page 9
    • Where didst thou steal that goodly coat of green, That thou art graithed in?1820, Wallace; a historical tragedy, in five acts

Noun

graith (countable and uncountable, plural graiths)

  1. (obsolete) Preparation; arrangement; condition.
    • […] tho' foul and tatter'd / In my present garb and graith1821, John Stagg, The Cumbrian Minstrel
    • Is your razor in good graith? (B.K.)1900, B.K., quoted in The English Dialect Dictionary, page 704
  2. (obsolete) Accoutrements: clothes, materials, equipment, furniture, etc.
    • Item, to James Homel, to buy graith for the King's vellum doublet, 0[L.] 10[s.] 0[d.]1797, An Account of Charge and, of John Bishop of Glasow, Treasurer to James III, for the Year 1474, rendered into modern English in The History Of Scotland from the Accession of the House of Stuart
    • The Earl of Moray, however, looking very sharply after his royal sister's personal property, came to Sir Robert Melville's house and insisted "on seeing what graith belonging to the Queen he had got there." Among these were a knot of pearls and a piece of gold […]1856, Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses

Forms of graith

Verb
third-person singular presentgraiths
present participlegraithing
past participlegraithed
pastgraithed
Noun
pluralgraiths

Origin of graith

From Middle English graithen, greithen, graiden, grathen, from Old Norse greiða (“to make ready, prepare, arrange, disentangle”), from Proto-Germanic *garaidijaną (“to prepare, put in order”). Cognate with Old English ġerǣdan (“to arrange, dispose, order, provide for, harness”), Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐍂𐌰𐌹𐌳𐌾𐌰𐌽 (garaidjan, “to enjoin”).

From Middle English graith, graythe, greithe, from Old Norse greiði (“preparation, arrangement”), from Proto-Germanic *garaidiją (“apparatus, gadget”). Cognate with Icelandic greiðe, greiði (“preparation, arrangement, order, hospitality”), Faroese greiði (“requisite articles”), Norwegian greida (“implements, tackle”), Norwegian greide (“harness”).

Words that rhyme with graith

Questions about graith

What does graith mean?
Graith means to make ready; prepare; put in order; make fit for use.
What part of speech is graith?
Graith can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce graith?
Graith is pronounced /ɡɹeɪθ/.
What is the past tense of graith?
The past tense of graith is graithed.

Words near graith in the dictionary

  1. grainwise
  2. grainy
  3. grainyhead
  4. Graioceli
  5. Graiomania
  6. graith
  7. graithed
  8. graithing
  9. graithly
  10. graiths
  11. Grajal de Campos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: graith (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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