- 1[countable] a piece cut from a living plant and fixed in a cut made in another plant, so that it grows there; the process or result of doing this A healthy shoot should form a strong graft.
- 2[countable] a piece of skin, bone, etc. removed from a living body and placed in another part of the body which has been damaged; the process or result of doing this a skin graft Wordfinderoperationamputate, anaesthetic, graft, operation, procedure, scalpel, scrubs, stitch, surgery, transplant Oxford Collocations Dictionary adjectivebone, skin verb + graftdo, undergo graft + verbtake See full entry See related entries: Operations
- 3[uncountable] (British English, informal) hard work Their success was the result of years of hard graft. Oxford Collocations Dictionary adjectivehard verb + graftdo See full entry
- 4[uncountable] (especially North American English) the use of illegal or unfair methods, especially bribery, to gain advantage in business, politics, etc.; money obtained in this way He promised an end to graft and corruption in public life. See related entries: Committing crime Word Originnoun senses 1 to 2 late Middle English graff, from Old French grafe, via Latin from Greek graphion ‘stylus, writing implement’ (with reference to the tapered tip of the scion), from graphein ‘write’. The final -t is typical of phonetic confusion between -f and -ft at the end of words; compare with tuft. noun sense 3 mid 19th cent.: perhaps related to the phrase spade's graft ‘the amount of earth that one stroke of a spade will move’, based on Old Norse grǫftr ‘digging’. noun sense 4 mid 19th cent.: of unknown origin.Extra examples If the skin graft takes, surgeons will do another operation a few weeks later. Linda had to undergo four skin grafts. Most of the graft was done for them by their assistants. Starting a new business involves a lot of hard graft. Their success was the result of years of hard graft.
graft
nounBrE BrE//ɡrɑːft//; NAmE NAmE//ɡræft//
Operations, Committing crimeCheck pronunciation: graft
