grade
Pluralgrades
Pluralgrades
- 1A stage of primary or secondary schooling, usually covering one year and numbered in sequence.
She teaches fifth grade at the local elementary school.
Students advance to the next grade at the end of each academic year.
UsageSay in (the) fifth grade or in grade five; the plain number after grade takes no the.
- 2A level of quality, rank, or degree on a scale, or the rating that places something at that level.
The factory produces steel in several grades of strength.
Only the top grade of wool is used for these coats.
UsageOften after a noun naming the use: food-grade plastic, military-grade steel; also of the highest grade.
Note
Commerce uses it as a label of fitness for purpose. Food grade diatomaceous earth is a purer variety meant for use with food and animal feed, set apart from other kinds sold under the same name.
- 3
- 4To evaluate an academic test, assignment, or a student's overall work, and give it a score.
Professors grade their students on a curve.
He graded the final papers before submitting the marks.
UsageYou grade papers, tests or students; grade on a curve means scoring against the rest of the class.
- 5To sort or organize items into ranked categories by quality or level.
Inspectors grade eggs according to size and quality.
The diamonds were graded by trained gemologists.
UsageOften passive or as an adjective: eggs are graded by size; a graded reader suits one level.
Similarsort, classify, rank, rate, categorize
- 6The slope of a road, railway, or other passage, whether rising or falling.
The highway has a six percent grade over the mountain pass.
Trains need extra power to climb steep grades.
UsagePairs naturally with steep and gentle: a steep grade, a gentle grade.
Similargradient, slope, incline, pitch
Note
Road builders and railway engineers state it as a percentage. A 5 percent grade climbs or falls five units for every hundred traveled horizontally. The same word covers a climb and a descent, so a downhill grade is still a grade.
- 7To flatten, level, or smooth a large surface, typically using a grader.
Crews grade the dirt road every spring.
The site was graded to ensure proper drainage.
Note
The verb for the work that produces the leveled stretch of ground, usually done with a machine called a grader. Roads are graded as well as building sites. Bob Foster's Birdum or Bust! (2000) describes road shoulders graded and verges cleared so that drivers are less likely to hit stray stock. To grade land before building is to give it the level the work requires.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Grading is commonly performed with a machine called a grader. cat.com
- Roads and building sites are graded. en.wikipedia.org
- Bob Foster's Birdum or Bust! describes grading shoulders and clearing verges to reduce collisions with stray livestock. en.wiktionary.org
- Grading land adjusts its level for construction. en.wikipedia.org
- 8The level or elevation of the ground surface at a given point.
The basement floor sits ten feet below grade.
Engineers measured the existing grade before construction.
UsageMostly in at grade, above grade and below grade, with no article.
Note
Below grade means below ground level, as in a basement. Materials that are easily damaged by moisture can be unsuitable for use there.
- 9A pupil in a particular school grade, called by that grade's number, so that the word names the child and not the school year.
As a grade eight, she was already reading well above her level.
The grade twelves organized a food drive for the whole school.
UsageA grade two is one pupil; the -s goes on the number: the grade sixes.
Less common meanings
- 10A measure of a tumor's degree of malignancy, expressed on a defined scale.
The biopsy showed a tumor of intermediate grade.
Pathologists assign a grade based on how abnormal the cells look.
Note
Pathologists assign it by examining cells under the microscope. The less a tumor's cells resemble normal tissue, the higher the grade, and higher grades usually mean faster growth. The scale gives the compounds low-grade and high-grade, and the result helps guide decisions about prognosis and treatment.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Pathologists determine tumor grade by examining biopsy samples under a microscope. cancer.gov
- Higher-grade tumors have cells that look less like normal cells. cancer.ca
- Higher tumor grades generally indicate faster growth. cancerresearchuk.org
- Tumor grade helps clinicians assess prognosis and plan treatment. cancer.gov
- 11To pass gradually and imperceptibly from one grade or level into another.
Where the two soil types meet, they grade into each other over several meters rather than at a sharp line.
These soil types grade into one another across the valley floor.
UsageUsually grade into something: one soil grades into the next.
Note
E. M. Forster stretches it in A Passage to India (1924), where humanity goes "grading and drifting beyond the educated vision", shading off without any boundary.
- 12To apply classifying labels to data, usually by hand rather than through an automatic process.
Annotators grade every transcript by hand, tagging each one with a topic label before it is added to the training data.
Because the automatic labels proved unreliable, the researchers graded the scans by hand, assigning each one a diagnostic category.
UsageOften in graded on a five-point scale or graded by hand.
Similarlabel, annotate, tag, classify
Note
Data work borrows the classroom verb: each item is given a label or a score, much as an answer is marked. People reading the items typically do the labeling, but the verb still applies when software assigns the grades.
- 13An expanse of ground that a grader has flattened and leveled.
After the bulldozers left, the crew set up the forms for the slab right on the freshly leveled grade.
Before the paving crew arrived, delivery trucks parked on the wide new grade the machines had smoothed the day before.
- 14To move from one school grade up into the next.
Similaradvance, move, progress, pass
Note
A dated Canadian school usage, built on the school-year sense. A pupil grades into the next level, or grades out of one: "I graded out of grade two and three."
- 15A taxon grouped by a shared level of morphological or physiological complexity rather than by common descent.
- 16Any of the three stages (positive, comparative, or superlative) in the comparison of an adjective or adverb.
- 17To describe, modify, or inflect a word so as to classify it by degree.
- 18To resize a garment pattern up or down from a base size while keeping the overall proportions consistent across all sizes.
- 19To trim the layers of a stitched seam allowance to different widths, reducing bulk and helping the finished seam lie flat.
- 20A unit of plane angle equal to one-hundredth of a right angle; a gradian.
- 21An eyeglass prescription specifying the corrective strength needed for a person's lenses.
- 22In algebraic geometry, the number of free points where n generic divisors of a linear system on an n-dimensional variety intersect.
- 23A harsh scraping or cutting action, or the grating sound it produces.
The whistle of the shot as it cuts the leaves / Of the maples around the church’s eaves— / And the grade of hatchets, fiercely thrown, / On wigwam-log, and tree, and stone.
1836, John Greenleaf Whittier, Mogg Megone
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
Grade was borrowed from Middle French grade ("a grade, degree"), which came from Latin gradus ("a step, pace, degree"). This traces back through Proto-Italic to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to walk, go." Gothic griþs ("step, grade") and Lithuanian gridiju ("to go, wander") are traditionally linked to it, though that connection is disputed.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- English grade was borrowed from Middle French grade, meaning a grade or degree. en.wiktionary.org
- French grade came from Latin gradus. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin gradus meant a step, pace or degree. en.wiktionary.org
- The ancestry runs through Proto-Italic to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to walk or go. en.wiktionary.org