graining

Pluralgrainings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The decorative technique of painting a surface to imitate the look of natural wood grain.

   The decorator's graining turned the plain pine door into convincing oak.

   Restorers matched the new graining to the room's original woodwork.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of grain.

   By graining the pine, the decorator made it pass for mahogany.

   The apprentice is graining the cheaper panels before they are varnished.

   Note

   One spelling does several jobs here: it serves as the gerund and the participle, and it also stands as a set of nouns in its own right. Only those nouns take a plural, grainings. The verb grain ranges from feeding livestock and forming crystals to imitating wood and dressing hides, so the object usually settles the meaning. The graining of a door points to the wood-imitating craft, and the graining of a skin points to leather work.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Indentation, roughening, or milling worked into a surface, such as the fine ridges around the edge of a coin.

   Collectors examine the graining along a coin's edge for signs of wear or tampering.

   Fine graining on the steel plate gave it a secure, non-slip grip.

   Similarmilling, knurling, reeding

   Note

   A coiner's word that John Locke reaches for in 1691, in Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, when he proposes to "mark the edges of the rest with a graining." That phrasing shows the countable use: a graining is one particular pattern of ridges or roughening. Without the article, the word names the treatment in general, as in fine graining on a steel plate.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A stage in dressing leather in which the hide is softened and its natural surface pattern is raised.

   The tanner judged the leather ready only after the graining had raised its surface pattern.

   Poor graining leaves the hide stiff and its surface flat.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The process of separating finished soap from the spent lye, usually by adding salt.

   The soap boiler added salt to begin the graining and lift the curds clear of the lye.

   Careful graining removes most of the impurities from each batch of soap.

   Similarsalting

   Note

   In the soap boiler's trade, this is the salting-out step. Common salt goes into the boiling mixture and lowers the soap's solubility. The soap then separates as curds, and the spent lye stays behind with the dissolved impurities. It is a working term from the trade, usually found in phrases such as to begin the graining.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A small European freshwater fish (Leuciscus leuciscus), also known as the dace or dobule.

   Anglers on the chalk streams often hook a graining while fishing for trout.

   The graining feeds on insects and small creatures near the riverbed.

   Similardace, dobule

   Note

   A separate word that only shares the spelling. The fish name has a different origin from the craft and process senses, so it has nothing to do with the wood-imitating craft or with leather and soap. Because the same fish also goes by dace and dobule, the Latin name Leuciscus leuciscus is the surest way to show which fish is meant.

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