Talk:grind

Tea room discussion

Note: the below discussion was moved from the Wiktionary:Tea room.

The use of Etymology 1 and 2 in grind looks strange to me. I don't see two etymologies. - dougher 04:32, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it is intended to say that the Old English word gave rise to the first group, from which the second group then came later. I have my doubts about making these kind of splits too. --EncycloPetey 04:34, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I think ideally you would simply list the verb first, and then the noun afterwards. But because many editors arrange POSs alphabetically, it becomes difficult to show this kind of relationship without splitting the sections. Widsith 10:48, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, is it true that (deprecated template usage) coffee grounds is the plural of (deprecated template usage) coffee grind? I think they're simply synonyms, one of which happens to be uncountable and one of which happens to be plural. I find it really hard to imagine "one coffee grind", "two coffee grounds". —Ruakh_TALK 01:53, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Based purely on my own usage: A coffee grind is a (countable) type of ground coffee in the sense of "fineness": drip grind, percolator grind, filter grind, etc. A coffee ground is a single particle of what is left after brewing, known collectively as "coffee grounds". It is based on the experience of my youth when some supermarkets had grinding machines which offered those selections. Consider this a hypothesis for the state of current usage in the US, because I haven't had too many conversations on the subject in the past decade or two. DCDuring TALK 02:36, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I think coffee grounds is one of those things which some dictionaries call “usually plural.” Not sure if a single particle is “a ground.” —Michael Z. 2008-07-17 04:11 z

Perhaps I can add that this (DCDuring's) is precisely my (UK) usage. —Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 05:45, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense. (I don't drink coffee, and was having difficulty making sense of what I was seeing on b.g.c.) Thanks! —Ruakh_TALK 03:13, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Musical sub-meaning

I had an interesting discussion today with a mormon who was violently offended by my use of the word "grinding" referring to a driving musical passage. I certainly could have used the word "driving" more appropriately to describe this musical phrase, but by choosing the word "grinding" I absolutely offended this person. Am I totally out in left field thinking of a grinding rhythm describing a building fast phrase?

--Connel MacKenzie (talk) 00:22, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

That person probably confused it with the verb sense ("dance in a sexually suggestive way"). Equinox ◑ 23:47, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Video games

Can also be transitive, perhaps collapsed from constructions like "grind for XP", "grind for lives", etc. to "grind XP", "grind lives", and so forth. Lots of cites for both on the web and I could find at least a few on YouTube although it is more difficult to search there. —Soap— 02:58, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

to grind one's vowels

In Patrick Gale's The Aerodynamics of Pork is the following passage:

"She embraced her godson warmly. 'My God,' she ground her vowels, ‘you are getting tall! You’ll match Great-grandfather yet."

What does it mean? None of our definitions seems to make sense here. --Droigheann (talk) 16:13, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Faroese etymology source

I don't know how to edit the article itself just yet, but after a fairly long search, I've been pointed to this page as a source for the etymology of the Faroese term for a pod of whales, reflecting that it is indeed an extension of the Old Norse term for a fence or grille: https://timarit.is/page/930661#page/n71/mode/2up I just thought it helpful to post a link for intellectual honesty's sake. Bobanthar (talk) 16:25, 25 November 2021 (UTC)