Noun

(en noun)

A tool with which one grates, especially cheese, to facilitate getting small particles or shreds off a solid lump.

I'm making coleslaw; do you know where the grater is?

Noun

(en noun)

(physics, science fiction) A device for the coherent amplification or generation of electromagnetic radiation in the gamma ray wavelength by the use of excitation energy in resonant atomic or molecular systems.

* {{quote-magazine

, year = 1964 , date = February , first = Wallace , last = Cloud , authorlink = , magazine = Popular Science Monthly , title = Science newsfront , url = http://books.google.com/books?id=qS0DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA29 , issn = 0161-7370 , volume = 184 , issue = 2 , page = 29 , passage = The Russians are working on the graser . One B. V. Chirkov has published a theoretical study in the Soviet Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics . He thinks a very pure crystal, "pumped" with a powerful source of radiation (such a "hard" X rays), much as a ruby crystal is pumped with high-intensity light in one form of laser, could be stimulated to emit coherent gamma rays—pulses of high-energy radiation perfectly in step. }}

* {{quote-magazine

, year = 1974 , date = October , first = Harlan , last = Ellison , authorlink = Harlan Ellison , magazine = The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , title = Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W , volume = 47 , issue = 4 , page = 59 , passage = Not lasers. Grasers . Gamma Ray Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. }}

The beam of coherent gamma rays produced by such a device.

* {{quote-book

, year = 2008 , title = , first = Neal , last = Asher , authorlink = Neal Asher , passage = The graser beam melted through the far wall of the lounge, but luckily beyond that lay only sections of the complex containing the cargo runcibles, and there it finally spent its energy slagging the massive handler robots. }}