graze
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Animals feeding from pasture.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
grayzIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɡɹeɪz
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The act of animals feeding from pasture.
The act of grazing; a scratching or injuring lightly on passing.
A light abrasion; a slight scratch.
A superficial abrasion
verb
ambitransitive
Let feed in a field or pasture or meadow
ambitransitive
To feed on; to eat (growing herbage); to eat grass from (a pasture)
transitive
To feed or supply (cattle, sheep, etc.) with grass; to furnish pasture for.
intransitive
To eat small amounts of food periodically throughout the day, rather than at fixed mealtimes, often not in response to hunger.
transitive
To tend (cattle, etc.) while grazing.
transitive
To cause a slight wound to; to scratch.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Rare
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The act of animals feeding from pasture.
Used this way, graze is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- crop , a specialist term, precise but narrower
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use graze
- “She was grazed by the stray bullet.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Fire approximately parallel to the ground.
A field covered with grass or herbage and suitable for grazing by livestock.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.