grounds

Pluralgrounds

1. 1
   nounplural

   The sediment that settles at the bottom of a liquid, or that remains after a liquid has been filtered.

   Rinse the press carefully so the grounds don't clog the drain.

   The damp grounds left in the filter make excellent fertilizer for roses.

   Similardregs, sediment

   Note

   This one is a different word despite the spelling. It comes from ground, the past participle of grind, so coffee grounds are literally what has been ground. It is used only in the plural: the grounds settle, and no one speaks of a single ground. Apart from its letters, it shares nothing with the legal 'basis' sense.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The basis or justification for an action, belief, or claim.

   The tenant challenged the eviction on the grounds that proper notice was never given.

   Investigators had reasonable grounds for suspecting fraud.

   Similarreason, basis, justification, cause

   Note

   A lawyer's plural: a claim or petition rests on its grounds, and grounds for divorce is the classic phrase. The noun takes for before another noun and that after on the, as in on the grounds that notice was never given. It shares its origin with the estate sense: ground in the sense of 'basis, surroundings'.

3. 3
   noun

   The land areas that together make up a larger property, such as those surrounding a building or estate.

   The mansion's grounds stretched for several acres beyond the formal gardens.

   Security patrols the hospital grounds throughout the night.

   Similarpremises, land, property, estate

   Note

   Here the plural names one property, not many separate pieces of land. It usually follows the place it belongs to, as in the castle grounds, or the school grounds where Michael Arlen's "Piracy" (1922) sets a night-prowler loose. The -s marks the extent of a single estate, so a school has grounds even when they form one continuous stretch of land.

4. 4
   noun

   Plural of ground.

   The tribe moved between its summer and winter hunting grounds.

   The old burial grounds lay just east of the village.

   Note

   Not every meaning of ground takes the -s. Terrain is a mass noun and stays singular, while soil, the bottom of a body of water, and a basis can all be counted and pluralized. The 'reason' meaning leans so strongly toward the plural that it has become the 'justification' noun in its own right.

5. 5
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of ground.

   The electrician grounds every outlet before sealing the wall.

   Whenever the children misbehave, their mother grounds them for a week.

   Note

   The -s here belongs to the verb ground, the one that earths a circuit, keeps a teenager at home, or keeps a plane from flying. It has nothing to do with grind, whose past participle merely shares the spelling ground. The same letters also spell the plural noun, so 'she grounds' and 'the grounds' are told apart only by the words around them.

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