Word.ws English Dictionary

graze

/ɡɹeɪz/

graze noun: the act of grazing; a scratching or injuring lightly on passing.

Noun

graze (plural grazes)

  1. The act of grazing; a scratching or injuring lightly on passing.
  2. A light abrasion; a slight scratch.
  3. The act of animals feeding from pasture.
    • If it be sundown, when the herds are returning from their daily graze in the long grass of the jungle, clouds of dust will be marking their track along every approach to the village […]1904, Empire Review, volume 6, page 188

Verb

graze (third-person singular simple present grazes, present participle grazing, simple past and past participle grazed)

  1. (transitive) To feed or supply (cattle, sheep, etc.) with grass; to furnish pasture for.
    • He hath a Houſe and Barn in repair, a Field or two to graze his Cows, with a Garden and Orchard.1732 March 6 (Gregorian calendar; date written), [Jonathan Swift], Considerations upon Two Bills Sent Down from the R[ight] H[onourable] the H[ouse] of L[ords] to the H[onoura]ble H[ouse] of C[ommons...
    • Although it is perfectly good meadowland, none of the villagers has ever grazed animals on the meadow on the other side of the wall.1999, Neil Gaiman, Stardust
  2. (ambitransitive) To feed on; to eat (growing herbage); to eat grass from (a pasture)
    • Cattle graze in the meadows.
    • The lambs vvith vvolves ſhall graze the verdant mead, / And boys in flovv'ry bands the tyger lead; […]1712 (date written), Alexander Pope, “Messiah. A Sacred Eclogue, in Imitation of Virgil’s Pollio.”, in The Works of Alexander Pope Esq. […], volume I, London: […] J[ohn] and P[aul] Knapton, H....
  3. (transitive) To tend (cattle, etc.) while grazing.
    • Shylock: When Jacob grazed his uncle Laban's sheepc. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  4. (intransitive) To eat small amounts of food periodically throughout the day, rather than at fixed mealtimes, often not in response to hunger.
    • Furthermore, people who take the time to sit down to proper meals find their food more satisfying than people who graze throughout the day. If you skip meals, you will inevitably end up snacking on more high-fat high-sugar foods.2008, Mohgah Elsheikh, Caroline Murphy, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
    • Many people, however, snack and graze from roughly the time they wake up until shortly before they go to bed.2018 July 24, Anahad O’Connor, “When We Eat, or Don’t Eat, May Be Critical for Health”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  5. To shoplift by consuming food or drink items before reaching the checkout.
    • Grazing refers to customers who consume food items before paying for them, for example, a customer bags one and a half pounds of grapes in the produce department, eats some as she continues her shopping […]1992, Shoplifting, page 18
    • Had the Grievant attempted to pay for the Mylanta or actually paid for it, then she would not be guilty of grazing or shoplifting.2001, Labor Arbitration Information System, volume 2, page 59
  6. (transitive) To rub or touch lightly the surface of (a thing) in passing.
    • the bullet grazed the wall
    • But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XXIII, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    glance
  7. (transitive) To cause a slight wound to; to scratch.
    • to graze one's knee
  8. (intransitive) To yield grass for grazing.
    • The sewers must be kept so as the water may not stay too long in the spring; for then the ground continueth the wet, whereby it will never graze to purpose that year.1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted...

graze meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

graze in Hindi

to eat grass from a pasture
चरना carnā
to tend cattle while grazing
चराना carānā

graze in Tamil

to feed or supply with grass
மேய் mēy
to eat grass from a pasture
மேய் mēy

graze in Marathi

to feed or supply with grass
चारणे cārṇe
to eat grass from a pasture
चरणे carṇe

graze in Urdu

to graze
چرنا carnā, چرائی črāy
More languagesFewer languages
graze in Malayalam
മേയ്ക്കുക mēykkuka, മേയുക mēyuka
graze in Kannada
ಮೇಯು mēyu
graze in Gujarati
ચરવું carvũ
graze in Assamese
চৰ sor, চৰা sora
graze in Nepali
चराउनु carāunu, चर्नु carnu
graze in Arabic
سَحَج saḥaj, رَعَى raʕā, اِرْتَعَى irtaʕā
graze in Thai
เลี้ยง líiang
graze in Vietnamese
chăn

Examples of graze in a sentence

  • I've always grazed my animals on the common land and I'm not going to stop now.
  • The bullet barely grazed the wild fowl's fly.
  • The livestock were poisoned by what they grazed on.

All 40 example sentences with graze

Synonyms of graze

Forms of graze

Noun
pluralgrazes
Verb
third-person singular presentgrazes
present participlegrazing
past participlegrazed
pastgrazed

Past tense of graze: grazed

Plural of graze: grazes

Origin of graze

Inherited from Middle English grasen (“to feed with grass”), from Old English grasian, from Proto-West Germanic *grasōn, from Proto-Germanic *grasōną, from *grasą (“grass”) + *-ōną (verbal suffix). Doublet of grass.

Words formed from graze

Words that rhyme with graze

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about graze

What does graze mean?
Graze means the act of grazing; a scratching or injuring lightly on passing.
What is graze in Hindi?
Graze in Hindi is चरना (carnā), चराना (carānā). See Graze meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is graze?
Graze can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce graze?
Graze is pronounced /ɡɹeɪz/.
What is the plural of graze?
The plural of graze is grazes.

Words near graze in the dictionary

  1. graywaters
  2. graywether
  3. graywethers
  4. Graz
  5. grazable
  6. graze
  7. grazeable
  8. Grazebrook
  9. Grazebrooks
  10. grazed
  11. grazeland

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: graze (page history and authors); چرائی (Urdu) (page history and authors); ಮೇಯು (Kannada) (page history and authors); ચરવું (Gujarati) (page history and authors); চৰ (Assamese) (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:

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

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