grain

Meanings

Noun

• The harvested seeds of various grass food crops eg: wheat, corn, barley.
• Similar seeds from any food crop, e.g., buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa.
• A single seed of grass food crops.
• The crops from which grain is harvested.
• A linear texture of a material or surface.
• A single particle of a substance.
• A very small unit of weight, in England equal to of an ounce troy, 0.0648 grams or, to be more exact, 64.79891 milligrams (0.002285714 avoirdupois ounce). A carat grain or pearl grain is carat or 50 milligrams. The old French grain was livre or 53.11 milligrams, and in the mesures usuelles permitted from 1812 to 1839, with the livre redefined as 500 grams, it was 54.25 milligrams.
• A former unit of gold purity, also known as carat grain, equal to "carat" (karat).
• A region within a material having a single crystal structure or direction.
• The solid piece of fuel in an individual solid-fuel rocket engine.
• 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.
• The hair side of a piece of leather, or the marking on that side.
• The remains of grain, etc., after brewing or distillation; hence, any residuum. Also called draff.
• A rounded prominence on the back of a sepal, as in the common dock.
• Temper; natural disposition; inclination.
• 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.
• A branch of a tree; a stalk or stem of a plant.
• A tine, prong, or fork.
• A thin piece of metal, used in a mould to steady a core.

Verb

• To feed grain to.
• To make granular; to form into grains.
• To form grains, or to assume a granular form, as the result of crystallization; to granulate.
• To texture a surface in imitation of the grain of a substance such as wood.
• To remove the hair or fat from a skin.
• To soften leather.
• To yield fruit.

Origin

• From Middle English greyn, grayn, grein, from Old French grain, grein, from Latin grānum, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵr̥h₂nóm. Compare English corn. gram.
• From Middle English grayn, from Old Norse grein.