graver

Pluralgravers

1. 1
   adjective

   Comparative of grave.

   Each report made the outlook graver than the last.

   The doctor's tone became graver as the test results came in.

   Note

   A comparative that only looks like the nouns. It is grave the adjective plus -er, unrelated to the engraver's tool despite the identical spelling. It compares the serious senses of grave, as in a graver danger or a graver mood. The noun grave, a place of burial, has no comparative, so graver never means anything to do with tombs.

2. 2
   noundatedcountable

   A pointed steel cutting tool used for incising lines into metal, wood, or other hard surfaces.

   She guided the graver along the curve, lifting a thin curl of metal as she worked.

   A set of gravers in different widths lay beside the engraver's bench.

   Similarburin

   Note

   An older name for the engraver's cutting tool. It is built from grave in its old sense "to engrave" plus -er, the suffix that names whatever does the work, and Old English græfere already covered both the tool's user and the craft. Today burin is the ordinary term, so graver suits historical or deliberately old-fashioned prose better than a modern printmaking manual.

3. 3
   nounobsolete

   A person who carves, sculpts, or engraves; one who works designs into wood, stone, or metal.

   The town's finest graver was commissioned to cut the memorial into the church wall.

   Apprentices studied under the old graver to learn how to shape figures from oak.

   Note

   Here the word names the craftsman rather than the blade, a use that has dropped out of English; engraver, carver and sculptor took its place. In older prose the two readings blur. When James Barry writes of "the incisions of the graver," the cuts could belong to the hand or to the steel. It shares its origin with the cutting tool.

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