grid

Pluralgrids

Formsgrids, gridding, gridded

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A rectangular arrangement of equal-sized squares or rectangles in rows and columns, as in a crossword puzzle.

   He sketched a grid of nine boxes before starting the Sudoku layout.

   The designer aligned every element on the page to an invisible grid.

   Similarlattice, matrix

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A system for delivering electricity, made up of substations, transformers, and generators linked together by wires.

   Engineers worked through the night to bring the regional grid back online.

   Surplus power from the wind farm feeds straight into the national grid.

   Similarnetwork

   Note

   With the definite article, it stops being a structure and becomes a supply. The Economist in 2013 judged solar power not yet "as cheap as the grid," meaning mains electricity itself. Die Hard (1988) shows the same habit when it speaks of shutting down "the whole grid." With a modifier, as in a regional grid or the national grid, it names one particular network. On its own, the grid means power on tap.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A system of lines that divides a map into numbered areas, used to locate and reference points precisely.

   The hikers gave their position as a six-figure grid reference.

   Surveyors overlaid a grid on the regional chart to plot each sample site.

   Note

   Mapmakers use these regularly spaced lines to turn places into numbers. Each square carries its own reference, so any feature can be given an unambiguous position. That is the grid reference hikers quote and surveyors plot by. In that phrase the noun works as a modifier. The act of laying such a network over a map or site has its own verb, to grid an area.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A framework of parallel metal bars set with gaps between them, also called a gridiron.

   The cook turned the sausages on the iron grid above the fire.

   Rainwater drained through the slotted grid in the gutter.

   Similargrating, grate, grille, gridiron

   Note

   The cooking sense explains the word itself. Grid is a shortening of griddle or gridiron, and here it keeps their meaning of a barred rack set over a fire. The Truth, Sydney (1897) shows how makeshift one could be: a camper's steak laid on a "grid" made from a piece of rusty fencing wire, well bent. When the full form is wanted, gridiron names the same rack.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   An arrangement of regular polygons that tiles a flat surface without gaps or overlaps, as in a honeycomb.

   The mosaic forms a perfect grid of interlocking hexagons.

   Engineers modeled the panel as a triangular grid covering the whole surface.

   Similartessellation, tiling, lattice

6. 6
   nouncountable

   The arranged pattern of starting positions assigned to the drivers at the start of a race.

   She qualified second and will line up on the front row of the grid.

   A penalty dropped him five places down the grid for Sunday's race.

   Note

   Motor racing treats the grid as a ladder to be climbed. Drivers line up on the front row of it, drop places down it after a penalty, or fight up from the back of it. Andrew Benson wrote of Lewis Hamilton doing exactly that at the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix. Words of position and movement, such as up, down, front and back, are the natural company of this sense.

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To mark a surface with a pattern of crossing lines that form squares.

   Quilters grid the fabric with chalk lines before cutting each piece.

   He gridded the old map before sketching in the terrain.

   Note

   The verb doubles its d before an ending: gridded and gridding, never grided. Its object is the surface that receives the lines. You grid a sheet, a quilt or a map. That keeps it apart from entering answers in a grid, where the object is what goes into the boxes rather than the surface being divided.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To assign a reference grid to a map or area so points can be located.

   Surveyors grid the terrain so each find can be logged by coordinate.

   After they gridded the excavation, every artifact received a precise reference.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   A structure of distributed computers, working largely peer-to-peer, harnessed together to solve complex scientific problems or process data at high speed.

   Climate scientists ran the simulation across a worldwide computing grid.

   The university linked its idle machines into a grid for protein-folding research.

   Similarnetwork, cluster

   Note

   Computing borrowed the word for machines that are pooled rather than built as one. A grid links separate, often widely scattered and unlike computers, mostly as peers, so that one large scientific job or a flood of data can be shared among them. The useful contrast is with a cluster, a more tightly built group of machines. A grid is the looser arrangement researchers turn to when a single machine or cluster is not enough.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    An openwork framework above a stage or studio, used for rigging lights and other equipment.

    A technician walked the grid to refocus each lamp before the show.

    The new theater's grid can support several tons of rigging.

    Similargridiron

    Note

    Theater crews walk this grid as well as look up at it. It is the working ceiling of beams over the stage from which lamps, backdrops and curtains hang. Maggie Harcourt's Theatrical (2018) notes that everything on the grid that moves up and down from the fly-tower must be counterweighted. Equipment is hung on or from the grid, and crew work up on it.

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