From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishgrategrate1 /ɡreɪt/ noun [countable] DHFthe metal bars and frame that hold the wood, coal etc in a fireplace
Examples from the Corpus
grate• She took the two halves of the letter away, tore them in fragments, and burned them in her grate.• The windows were covered with iron grates.• Through the slate-floored living-room, with its exposed beams, open grate and massive heart-of-oak mantelpiece, was the kitchen.• The homeless slept on subway grates to keep warm.• A thousand people, mostly men, gathered around the grate one day last spring to witness a double execution.• The scrubbing was the nastiest, she thought despairingly, bad though blacking the grates, particularly the kitchen range, was.• Even with the furnace on, he had the servants put coal in the grates of most of the rooms.• Fires smouldered in the grates of sitting-rooms, but the passages and bedrooms at Kinton were apt to be piercingly cold.• Those in front clambered up on to the grates that covered the entrance.grategrate2 verb 1 [transitive]DFC to rub cheese, vegetables etc against a rough or sharp surface in order to break them into small pieces grated cheese Peel and grate the potatoes.► see thesaurus at cut2 [transitive] written to talk in a low rough voice → hiss ‘Let me go, ’ he grated harshly.3 [intransitive]ANNOY to annoy someonegrate on Mr Fen had a loud voice that grated on her ears.4 [intransitive, transitive]SOUND to make an unpleasant sound by rubbing, or to make something do this The stones beneath her shoes grated harshly.→ See Verb tableExamples from the Corpus
grate• The Parmesan cheese was freshly grated.• Cool on a wire rack, then cut in two horizontally. 4 To make filling, finely grate orange.• I always like to grate some cheese over the potatoes before serving them.• Drain well. 3 Peel and roughly grate the carrots.• She started to grate the cheese.• Although their characters grate, the performances almost always please.Origin grate1 (1300-1400) Medieval Latin crata, grata “something made of woven sticks”, from Latin cratis; → CRATE1 grate2 (1300-1400) Old French grater “to make marks in a surface” 