grain
/ɡɹeɪn/noun, verb
grain is spelled G-R-A-I-N: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 15 times per million words in written English, the 5,309th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, grain means “The harvested seeds of various grass food crops, especially wheat, maize, rye, barley, and rice” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of grain is grains.
How many letters and syllables are in grain?
| Letters | 5: G-R-A-I-N |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 15 times per million words; the 5,309th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is grain?
Grain appears 15 times per million words in written English, the 5,309th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce grain?
- /ɡɹeɪn/
Grain has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-grain.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with grain?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as grain.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: agrin.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of grain
- grains plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- graining participle, present
- grained participle, past
- grane
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does grain mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The harvested seeds of various grass food crops, especially wheat, maize, rye, barley, and rice.
Near-synonym: corn (broad sense, maize and others)
- 2
Similar seeds from any food crop, e.g., buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa.
Near-synonym: corn (broad sense, maize and others)
- 3
A single seed of a food crop, especially a cereal grass crop.
a grain of wheat
- 4
The crops from which grain is harvested.
The fields were planted with grain.
- 5
A linear texture of a material or surface.
Cut along the grain of the wood.
- 6
A single particle of a substance.
a grain of sand
- 7
The English grain of ¹⁄₅₇₆₀ troy pound or ¹⁄₇₀₀₀ pound avoirdupois, now exactly 64.79891 mg.
- 8
The metric, carat, or pearl grain of ¹⁄₄ carat used for measuring precious stones and pearls, now exactly 50 mg.
- 9
A branch of a tree; a stalk or stem of a plant; an offshoot.
- 10
One of the branches of a valley or river.
- 11
An iron fish spear or harpoon, with a number of points half-barbed inwardly.
Served 5 lb of fish per man which was caught by striking with grains
- 12
A blade of a sword, knife, etc.
- 13
An arm of a cross.
- 14
A thin piece of metal, used in a mould to steady a core.
- 15
A branch or arm of a stream, inlet, or sea.
- 16
A fork in a river valley or ravine.
verb
- 1
To feed grain to.
- 2
To make granular; to form into grains.
- 3
To form grains, or to assume a granular form, as the result of crystallization; to granulate.
- 4
To texture a surface in imitation of the grain of a substance such as wood.
- 5
To remove the hair or fat from a skin.
- 6
To soften leather.
- 7
To yield fruit.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate grain?
Wiktionary records 2 abbreviations of grain: gr, gr..
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Grain in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | grain , grener, grainer , tanner |
| German | Korn, Getreide , Körnchen , Maserung |
| Portuguese | grão , granularidade , cereal , glóbulo |
| Spanish | grano , pipo, yule , veta , cereal |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does grain come from?
From Middle English greyn, grayn, grein, from Old French grain, grein, from Latin grānum (“seed”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵr̥h₂nóm (“grain”). Doublet of corn, gram, granum, and grao.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).