grains

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of grain.

   Tiny grains of pollen drifted through the open window.

   The farmer stored several different grains in separate silos.

   Note

   What grains means depends on which sense of grain is counted. The countable senses pluralize naturally: single seeds, or particles of sand, salt or pollen. When grain names a harvest as a mass, the plural shifts to mean kinds, so wheat, barley and quinoa are all grains. The texture sense resists the plural, and a board shows its grain even when the pattern runs in many lines.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of grain.

   The craftsman grains the cabinet panels to imitate walnut.

   This machine grains the hide, raising a textured pattern across its surface.

   Note

   The -s form covers both transitive and intransitive uses of the verb. Usually a person or machine is the subject and something gets grained: a finisher grains a panel to look like oak, and a tanner grains a hide. In the crystallization sense there is no object. The substance itself is the subject, as when a syrup grains as it cools and sets into granules.

3. 3
   nounplural

   Pigeon dung used in the tanning process to prepare hides before they are turned into leather.

   Before currying, the hides were steeped in a warm solution of grains for several days.

   The old recipe called for grains gathered from the dovecotes behind the tannery.

   Note

   A tanner's word that exists only in the plural. There is no singular grain of dung, and it takes a plural verb: the grains were steeped, not the grains was. It is a separate word in origin from the everyday plural of grain, so in an old tannery text the surroundings decide the meaning. Hides, dovecotes and steeping point to this word; sacks and silos point to the other.

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