grain

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The seeds of food crops such as wheat, corn, and rice, used for food.

   We stored a thousand tons of grain for the winter.

2. 2
   noun

   A single tiny, hard piece of a substance such as sand, salt, or rice.

   A grain of sand got stuck in my eye.

3. 3
   noun

   The natural pattern of lines in wood, stone, or fabric.

   You should always cut wood along the grain.

4. 4
   noun

   A very small amount of something.

   There was a grain of truth in what he said.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Grain comes from Latin granum, meaning “seed,” and originally denoted a single plant seed. It later came to mean a small seedlike particle and, by the mid-17th century, the seedlike arrangement of fibres visible in materials such as wood.

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.

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary