graze English
Noun
( en noun)
The act of grazing; a scratching or injuring lightly on passing.
A light abrasion; a slight scratch.
Verb
( graz)
To feed or supply (cattle, sheep, etc.) with grass; to furnish pasture for.
* Jonathan Swift
- a field or two to graze his cows
* 1999:' Although it is perfectly good meadowland, none of the villagers has ever '''grazed animals on the meadow on the other side of the wall. — ''Stardust , Neil Gaiman, page 4 (2001 Perennial Edition).
(ambitransitive) To feed on; to eat (growing herbage); to eat grass from (a pasture); to browse.
- Cattle graze in the meadows.
* Alexander Pope
- The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead.
* 1993 , John Montroll, Origami Inside-Out (page 41)
- The bird [Canada goose] is more often found on land than other waterfowl because of its love for seeds and grains. The long neck is well adapted for grazing .
To tend (cattle, etc.) while grazing.
* Shakespeare
- when Jacob grazed his uncle Laban's sheep
To rub or touch lightly the surface of (a thing) in passing.
- the bullet grazed the wall
* 1851 ,
- But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through.
To cause a slight wound to; to scratch.
- to graze one's knee
To yield grass for grazing.
* Francis Bacon
- The sewers must be kept so as the water may not stay too long in the spring; for then the ground continueth the wet, whereby it will never graze to purpose that year.
Derived terms
* overgraze
Anagrams
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grazier English
Noun
( en noun)
(UK, historical) One who grazes cattle and/or sheep on a rural property.
- Graziers on the tablelands are in dire straits because they do not have enough winter feed and will have to keep reducing stock.
(Australia) The owner of a large property on which sheep or cattle graze.
* 1963 , Colin Clark, Australian Hopes and Fears , page 75 ,
- As a result of these causes the grazier' marks himself off fairly sharply from the rest of Australia. He has always spent a considerable proportion of the time in the capital cities, in each of which he has formed a club to which, besides the ' graziers , only a few of the wealthiest and most prominent of the city dwellers are admitted.
* 1996 , , Virago Press, paperback edition, page 44
- They have been here, the bora rings, for over twenty thousand years, it is believed; it is only in the past hundred, a hiccup in time, that indifferent graziers and the treads of their four-wheel drives have scattered the stones and have imprinted zippered cars across their sacred clay skin.
* 2000 , Bill Pritchard, Phil McManus, Land of Discontent: The Dynamics of Change in Rural and Regional Australia , page 34 ,
- The ‘grazier'’ image can be contrasted to that of the ‘cocky’. ' Graziers have tended to own large tracts of land, have inherited family wealth from the heady days of high wool prices, often reside in stately homes, possess a good education, and have taken leadership roles in the industry.
Usage notes
In Britain, the term is no longer used, but has historical significance.
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