Grind

How to spell grind

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce grind

What does grind mean?

1. verbTo crush, sharpen, or smooth something by rubbing it against a hard surface.
2. nounDull, exhausting, and repetitive work or routine.

Grind in a sentence

• verb

  She likes to grind the coffee beans fresh each morning.

• noun

  After a long commute, the daily grind began to wear him down.

• verb

  The butcher will grind the beef while you wait.

• noun

  Finishing the tax return felt like a relentless grind.

Where does grind come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes straight from the Old English verb grindan, which meant to rub two surfaces together so as to crush or reduce something to powder. It belongs to a family of old Germanic words and is related to forms in Dutch and Low German, all carrying the sense of friction and crushing. For centuries it described the literal work of milling grain between heavy stones, which is why a mill was once central to every village. From that physical action the figurative sense of wearisome, repetitive effort grew, giving us the modern phrase the daily grind for tedious routine. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable since Anglo-Saxon times, and the irregular past tense ground (rather than grinded) is a direct survival of how strong verbs changed their vowel in Old English.

How the word is built

• grind (from Old English grindan: to rub together, crush)