grid

Etymology

From a shortening of griddle or gridiron.

noun

1. A rectangular array of squares or rectangles of equal size, such as in a crossword puzzle.
2. A tiling of the plane with regular polygons; a honeycomb.
3. A system for delivery of electricity, consisting of various substations, transformers and generators, connected by wire.
   You can't turn off the building from here; you have to shut down the whole grid. 1988, Die Hard (movie)
   [Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages. 2013-07-20, “Out of the gloom”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845
4. (computing) A system or structure of distributed computers working mostly on a peer-to-peer basis, used mainly to solve single and complex scientific or technical problems or to process data at high speeds (as in clusters).
5. (cartography) A method of marking off maps into areas.
6. (motor racing) The pattern of starting positions of the drivers for a race.
   McLaren's Lewis Hamilton fought up from the back of the grid to eighth, with team-mate Jenson Button taking ninth. May 13, 2012, Andrew Benson, “Williams's Pastor Maldonado takes landmark Spanish Grand Prix win”, in BBC Sport
7. (electronics) The third (or higher) electrode of a vacuum tube (triode or higher).
8. (electricity) A battery-plate somewhat like a grating, especially a zinc plate in a primary battery, or a lead plate in a secondary or storage battery.
9. A grating of parallel bars; a gridiron.
10. (theater, television) An openwork ceiling above the stage or studio, used for affixing lights etc.
    Everything on the grid – all the backdrops and curtains, anything that has to move up and down from the fly-tower – has to be counterweighted. 2018, Maggie Harcourt, Theatrical

verb

1. To mark with a grid.
2. To assign a reference grid to.