grain

Webster's Dictionary (1913)

See Groan. obsolete

Origin: F. grain, L. granum, grain, seed, small kernel, small particle. See Corn, and cf. Garner, noun, Garnet, Gram the chick-pea, Granule, Kernel.

1. A single small hard seed; a kernel, especially of those plants, like wheat, whose seeds are used for food.

2. The fruit of certain grasses which furnish the chief food of man, as corn, wheat, rye, oats, etc., or the plants themselves; — used collectively.

Storehouses crammed with grain.— William Shakespeare

3. Any small, hard particle, as of sand, sugar, salt, etc.; hence, any minute portion or particle; as, a grain of gunpowder, of pollen, of starch, of sense, of wit, etc.

I... with a grain of manhood well resolved.— John Milton

4. The unit of the English system of weights; — so called because considered equal to the average of grains taken from the middle of the ears of wheat. 7,000 grains constitute the pound avoirdupois, and 5,760 grains the pound troy. A grain is equal to.0648 gram. See Gram.

5. 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.

All in a robe of darkest grain.— John Milton

Doing as the dyers do, who, having first dipped their silks in colors of less value, then give' them the last tincture of crimson in grain.— Quoted by Coleridge, preface to Aids to Reflection.

6. The composite particles of any substance; that arrangement of the particles of any body which determines its comparative roughness or hardness; texture; as, marble, sugar, sandstone, etc., of fine grain.

Hard box, and linden of a softer grain.— John Dryden

7. The direction, arrangement, or appearance of the fibers in wood, or of the strata in stone, slate, etc.

Knots, by the conflux of meeting sap, Infect the sound pine and divert his grain Tortive and errant from his course of growth.— William Shakespeare

8. The fiber which forms the substance of wood or of any fibrous material.

9. The hair side of a piece of leather, or the marking on that side. Knight, Edward Henry

10. pl. The remains of grain, etc., after brewing or distillation; hence, any residuum. Also called draff.

11. Botany A rounded prominence on the back of a sepal, as in the common dock. See Grained, adjective, 4.

12. Temper; natural disposition; inclination. obsolete

Brothers... not united in grain.— Sir John Hayward

13. A sort of spice, the grain of paradise. obsolete

He cheweth grain and licorice, To smellen sweet.— Geoffrey Chaucer

Against the grain, against or across the direction of the fibers; hence, against one's wishes or tastes; unwillingly; unpleasantly; reluctantly; with difficulty. Jonathan Swift George Edward Bateman Saintsbury— A grain of allowance, a slight indulgence or latitude a small allowance. — Grain binder, an attachment to a harvester for binding the grain into sheaves. — Grain colors, dyes made from the coccus or kermes insect. — Grain leather. (a) Dressed horse hides. (b) Goat, seal, and other skins blacked on the grain side for women's shoes, etc. — Grain moth Zoology, one of several small moths, of the family Tineidæ (as Tinea granella and Butalis cerealella), whose larvæ devour grain in storehouses. — Grain side Leather, the side of a skin or hide from which the hair has been removed; — opposed to flesh side. — Grains of paradise, the seeds of a species of amomum. — grain tin, crystalline tin ore metallic tin smelted with charcoal. — Grain weevil Zoology, a small red weevil (Sitophilus granarius), which destroys stored wheat and other grain, by eating out the interior. — Grain worm Zoology, the larva of the grain moth. See grain moth, above. — In grain, of a fast color; deeply seated; fixed; innate; genuine. “Anguish in grain.” George Herbert — To dye in grain, to dye of a fast color by means of the coccus or kermes grain [see Grain, noun, 5]; hence, to dye firmly; also, to dye in the wool, or in the raw material. See under Dye.

The red roses flush up in her cheeks... Likce crimson dyed in grain.— Edmund Spenser

— To go against the grain of (a person), to be repugnant to; to vex, irritate, mortify, or trouble.

1. To paint in imitation of the grain of wood, marble, etc.

2. To form (powder, sugar, etc.) into grains.

3. To take the hair off (skins); to soften and raise the grain of (leather, etc.).

Origin: F. grainer, grener. See Grain, noun

1. To yield fruit. obsolete John Gower

2. To form grains, or to assume a granular form, as the result of crystallization; to granulate.

Origin: See Groin a part of the body.

1. A branch of a tree; a stalk or stem of a plant. obsolete Gawin Douglas

2. A tine, prong, or fork. Specifically: (a) One the branches of a valley or of a river. (b) pl. An iron fish spear or harpoon, having four or more barbed points.

3. A blade of a sword, knife, etc.

4. Founding A thin piece of metal, used in a mold to steady a core.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

A pictorial query language.

["Pictorial Information Systems", S.K. Chang et al eds, Springer 1980].

(1995-01-23)

<jargon, parallel> The size of the units of code under consideration in some context. The term generally refers to the level of detail at which code is considered, e.g. "You can specify the granularity for this profiling tool".

The most common computing use is in parallelism or concurrency where "fine grain parallelism" means individual tasks are relatively small in terms of code size and execution time, "coarse grain" is the opposite. You talk about the "granularity" of the parallelism.

The smaller the granularity, the greater the potential for parallelism and hence speed-up but the greater the overheads of synchronisation and communication.

(1997-05-08)