Grating

How to spell grating

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce grating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does grating mean?

1. adjectiveSounding harsh and unpleasant, or being irritating to the senses or nerves.
2. nounA framework of parallel or crossed bars covering an opening, such as a drain or window.
3. verbThe act of shredding food by rubbing it against a rough or perforated surface.

Grating in a sentence

• adjective

  His grating voice carried across the quiet office and annoyed everyone.

• noun

  Rainwater drained quickly through the metal grating in the road.

• verb

  Grating fresh nutmeg over the sauce improved its flavour considerably.

• adjective

  The grating noise of the unoiled hinge set her teeth on edge.

• noun

  Fallen leaves clogged the grating over the gutter outside the shop.

• verb

  Grating a whole block of cheese by hand took longer than she expected.

Where does grating come from?

Language of origin: French

This single spelling actually pulls together two different histories that happened to land on the same form. The noun meaning a framework of bars descends from the Latin cratis, which meant 'wickerwork' or a woven 'hurdle', and reached English through medieval Latin and Old French as 'grate', a barred frame. The adjective and the cooking sense come instead from the verb 'to grate', borrowed from Old French grater 'to scrape', a word of Germanic origin related to 'scratch'. From the idea of scraping one rough surface against another came both the kitchen act of shredding food and the figurative sense of a sound that scrapes unpleasantly on the ear. The word settled into modern English by the 1500s, and because the harsh-sound meaning and the lattice meaning share the same spelling, the friendly thing to remember is that it has a single 't': the verb is 'grate', and adding '-ing' simply drops the final 'e'.

How the word is built

• grate (from Latin cratis: wickerwork, lattice; and Old French grater: to scrape)
• -ing