grid

English

Etymology

Back-formation or clipping of griddle or gridiron.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡɹɪd/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: grid
• Rhymes: -ɪd

Noun

grid (plural grids)

1. A rectangular array of squares or rectangles of equal size, such as in a crossword puzzle.
2. A tiling of the plane with regular polygons; a honeycomb.
3. A system for delivery of electricity, consisting of various substations, transformers and generators, connected by wire.
   • 1988, Die Hard (movie)

     You can't turn off the building from here; you have to shut down the whole grid.

   • 2013 July 20, “Out of the gloom”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:

     [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.

4. (computing) A system or structure of distributed computers working mostly on a peer-to-peer basis, used mainly to solve single and complex scientific or technical problems or to process data at high speeds (as in clusters).
5. (cartography) A method of marking off maps into areas.
6. (motor racing) The pattern of starting positions of the drivers for a race.
   • 2012 May 13, Andrew Benson, “Williams's Pastor Maldonado takes landmark Spanish Grand Prix win”, in BBC Sport:

     McLaren's Lewis Hamilton fought up from the back of the grid to eighth, with team-mate Jenson Button taking ninth.

7. (electronics) The third (or higher) electrode of a vacuum tube (triode or higher).
8. (electricity) A battery-plate somewhat like a grating, especially a zinc plate in a primary battery, or a lead plate in a secondary or storage battery.
9. A grating of parallel bars; a gridiron.
10. (theater, television) An openwork ceiling above the stage or studio, used for affixing lights etc.
    • 2018, Maggie Harcourt, Theatrical:

      Everything on the grid – all the backdrops and curtains, anything that has to move up and down from the fly-tower – has to be counterweighted.

Hyponyms

• national grid
• numerical grid
• supergrid

Derived terms

Translations

See also

References

• grid on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Verb

grid (third-person singular simple present grids, present participle gridding, simple past and past participle gridded)

1. To mark with a grid.
2. To assign a reference grid to.
3. (education) To enter in a grid.

   On the SAT, to answer a grid-in question, you grid in your answer by filling out the ovals.

Translations

Further reading

• “grid”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “grid”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• gird

Gothic

Romanization

grid

1. Romanization of 𐌲𐍂𐌹𐌳

Portuguese

Pronunciation

Noun

grid m (plural grids)

1. (computing) grid (system distributed computers)
2. (motor racing) grid (starting positions of the drivers for a race)

Synonyms

• starting positions of racers grid de largada

Welsh

Etymology

Borrowed from English grid.

Pronunciation

• (North Wales) IPA^(key): /ˈɡrɪd/
• (South Wales) IPA^(key): /ˈɡrid/

Noun

grid m (plural gridiau)

1. a grid

Mutation

References

• R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke et al., editors (1950–present), “grid”, in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies