ground

Etymology 1

From Middle English grounde, from Old English grund, from Proto-Germanic *grunduz. Cognate with West Frisian grûn, Dutch grond and German Grund.

noun

1. The surface of the Earth, as opposed to the sky or water or underground.
   Look, I found a ten dollar bill on the ground!
   From the ground, Colombo’s port does not look like much. Those entering it are greeted by wire fences, walls dating back to colonial times and security posts. 2013-06-08, “The new masters and commanders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 52
2. (uncountable) Terrain.
   As the terrain-following radar scans the ground ahead of the aircraft the actual clearance height is measured by the radio altimeter. 1971, “The development of terrain following radar: an account of the progress made with an airborne guidance system for low flying military aircraft”, in Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology
3. Soil, earth.
   The worm crawls through the ground.
4. (countable) The bottom of a body of water.
5. Basis, foundation, groundwork, legwork.
6. (chiefly in the plural) Reason, (epistemic) justification, cause.
   You will need to show good grounds for your action.
   He could not come on grounds of health, or on health grounds.
7. Background, context, framework, surroundings.
8. (historical) The area on which a battle is fought, particularly as referring to the area occupied by one side or the other. Often, according to the eventualities, "to give ground" or "to gain ground".
9. (figurative, by extension) Advantage given or gained in any contest; e.g. in football, chess, debate or academic discourse.
10. (in combination) A place suited to a specified activity.
    a forest traditionally used as a hunting-ground
    I gather from your last answer that at the present time the constabulary, to a certain extent, is good recruiting ground for the army? 1876, Parliamentary Papers, volume 14, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, page 147
11. The plain surface upon which the figures of an artistic composition are set.
    crimson flowers on a white ground
    One and All is the motto of the County of Cornwall, used below the coat-of-arms, which is a shield embracing fifteen bezants, or golden roundels, on a black ground; …. 1941 December, “The Why and the Wherefore: Cornish names of G.W.R. locomotives”, in Railway Magazine, page 575
12. (sculpture) A flat surface upon which figures are raised in relief.
13. (point lace) The net of small meshes upon which the embroidered pattern is applied.
    Brussels ground
14. (etching) A gummy substance spread over the surface of a metal to be etched, to prevent the acid from eating except where an opening is made by the needle.
15. (architecture, chiefly in the plural) One of the pieces of wood, flush with the plastering, to which mouldings etc. are attached.
    Grounds are usually put up first and the plastering floated flush with them.
16. (countable) A soccer stadium.
    Manchester United's ground is known as Old Trafford.
17. (electricity, Canada and US) An electrical conductor connected to the earth, or a large conductor whose electrical potential is taken as zero (such as a steel chassis).
    А ground may be undesirable, inadvertent, or accidental path taken by an electrical current; or it may be the deliberate provision of conductors well connected to the ground by means of plates buried therein, or similar device. 1961, “GROUND”, in The International Dictionary of Physics and Electronics, 2nd edition, Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, page 539
18. (electricity, Philippines) Electric shock.
19. (countable, cricket) The area of grass on which a match is played (a cricket field); the entire arena in which it is played; the part of the field behind a batsman's popping crease where he can not be run out (hence to make one's ground).
20. (music) A composition in which the bass, consisting of a few bars of independent notes, is continually repeated to a varying melody.
21. (music) The tune on which descants are raised; the plain song.
22. The pit of a theatre.
23. (India, obsolete) Synonym of munny (“land measure”)
    It is sub-divided into annas (or 16ths), of 3,600 square feet each; or when the land is for building purposes, into grounds (munnies) of 1/24 of a cawny each, as in the town of Madras. 1885, Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency, page 515

verb

1. (US) To connect (an electrical conductor or device) to a ground.
2. (Philippines) To electrocute.
3. (transitive) To punish, especially a child or teenager, by forcing them to stay at home and/or give up certain privileges.
   If you don't clean your room, I'll have no choice but to ground you.
   Eric, you are grounded until further notice for lying to us about where you were last night!
   My kids are currently grounded from television.
4. (transitive) To forbid (an aircraft or pilot) to fly.
   Because of the bad weather, all flights were grounded.
5. To give a basic education in a particular subject; to instruct in elements or first principles.
   Jim was grounded in maths.
6. (baseball) To hit a ground ball. Compare fly (verb (regular)) and line (verb).
   [Ichiro Suzuki] went 0 for 4, popping out in foul territory, grounding out to second, and striking out looking. And then, in the top of the eighth inning with a runner on second, the “True Hit King” grounded out to short, just barely failing to beat it out. 2019-03-21, Chris Cwik, “Ichiro Suzuki Goes Out in Style, Retires After Series in Japan”, in Yahoo! Sports
   The Twins scored three times in the eighth to make it 9-4 and loaded the bases with no outs. Jeurys Familia got Willians Astudillo to ground into a double play, limiting the damage. 2019-04-10, Ben Walker (AP), “Twins Pitchers Go Wild, Syndergaard and Mets Stroll 9-6”, in Yahoo! Sports, archived from the original on 2019-04-11
7. To place something on the ground.
8. (intransitive) To run aground; to strike the bottom and remain fixed.
   The ship grounded on the bar.
9. To found; to fix or set, as on a foundation, reason, or principle; to furnish a ground for; to fix firmly.
10. (fine arts) To cover with a ground, as a copper plate for etching, or as paper or other materials with a uniform tint as a preparation for ornament.
11. To improve or focus the mental or emotional state of.
    I ground myself with meditation.
12. (machine learning) To complement a machine learning model with relevant information it was not trained on.
    We design WikiChat (Figure 1) to ground LLMs using Wikipedia to achieve the following objectives. While LLMs tend to hallucinate, our chatbot should be factual. 2023, Sina J. Semnani, Violet Z. Yao, Heidi C. Zhang, Monica S. Lam, “WikiChat: A Few-Shot LLM-Based Chatbot Grounded with Wikipedia”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)

Etymology 2

Inflected form of grind. See also milled.

verb

1. simple past and past participle of grind
   I ground the coffee up nicely.

adj

1. Crushed, or reduced to small particles.
   ground mustard seed
   Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of Ahab's iron soul. 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick
   The intestinal contents of F. Stellifer seem finely ground in comparison to those of F. catenatus, probably as a result of chewing with the stout pharyngeal molars. 1969, Tulane Studies in Zoology and Botany, volume 16, page 16
   Powder mixing and grinding are complete when the powder is homogenous and grey-black in color, appears finely ground, and feels smooth. 2018, S Sivakumar, E Zwier, PB Meisenheimer…, “Bulk and Thin Film Synthesis of Compositionally Variant Entropy-stabilized Oxides”, in Journal of Visualized Experiments
2. Processed by grinding.
   lenses of ground glass
   the traces of wear have the appearance of dull patches that look ground. 1985, Sergeĭ Aristarkhovich Semenov, Prehistoric Technology: An Experimental Study of the Oldest Tools and Artefacts from Traces of Manufacture and Wear, page 14
   The axial perforation, the handle socket and the quern base are all rough and do not appear ground or polished 2000, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, page 258
   An advantage of such a finishing tool is that, after the machining, the workpiece has high surface quality. The surface which is produced appears finely ground to polished by means of this procedure. 2018, H Glimpel, HJ Lauffer, A Bremstahler, Finishing Tool, In Particular End Milling Cutter, US Patent App. 15/764,739