Noun

(en noun)

(countable) A tiny spot, especially of dirt etc.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Out of the gloom , passage=[Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages.}}

(uncountable) A juniper-flavoured ham originally from Tyrol.

A very small thing; a particle; a whit.

* (Walter Savage Landor), quoted in 1971, Ernest Dilworth, Walter Savage Landor , Twayne Publishers, page 88,

Onward, and many bright specks bubble up along the blue Aegean; islands, every one of which, if the songs and stories of the pilots are true, is the monument of a greater man than I am.

A small etheostomoid fish, , common in the eastern United States.

Noun

(-)

The blubber of whales or other marine mammals.

The fat of the hippopotamus.

Noun

(uncountable) The harvested seeds of various grass food crops eg: wheat, corn, barley.

We stored a thousand tons of grain for the winter.

(uncountable) Similar seeds from any food crop, eg buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa.

(countable) A single seed of grain.

a grain of wheat

(countable, uncountable) The crops from which grain is harvested.

The fields were planted with grain .

(uncountable) A linear texture of a material or surface.

Cut along the grain of the wood.

(countable) A single particle of a substance.

a grain of sand

a grain of salt

(countable) A very small unit of weight, in England equal to 1/480 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 1/4 carat or 50 milligrams. The old French grain was 1/9216 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.

(countable) A former unit of gold purity, also known as carat grain , equal to "carat" (karat).

(materials) A region within a material having a single crystal structure or direction.

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.

* Milton

all in a robe of darkest grain

* Quoted by Coleridge, preface to Aids to Reflection

doing as the dyers do, who, having first dipped their silks in colours of less value, then give them the last tincture of crimson in grain .

The hair side of a piece of leather, or the marking on that side.

(Knight)

(in the plural) The remains of grain, etc., after brewing or distillation; hence, any residuum. Also called

(botany) A rounded prominence on the back of a sepal, as in the common dock.

Temper; natural disposition; inclination.

* Hayward

brothers not united in grain

Noun

(en noun)

A branch of a tree; a stalk or stem of a plant.

A tine, prong, or fork.

# One of the branches of a valley or river.

# An iron fish spear or harpoon, with a number of points half-barbed inwardly.

#* 1770 : Served 5 lb of fish per man which was caught by striking with grains'' — journal of Stephen Forwood (gunner on ), 4 May 1770, quoted by Parkin (page 195).

# A blade of a sword, knife, etc.

(founding) A thin piece of metal, used in a mould to steady a core.