GRADE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Grade

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/greɪd/ Listen

noun

Grade n.

1.

A step or degree in any series, rank, quality, order; relative position or standing; as, grades of military rank; crimes of every grade; grades of flour. "They also appointed and removed, at their own pleasure, teachers of every grade."

2.

In a railroad or highway:

(a)

The rate of ascent or descent; gradient; deviation from a level surface to an inclined plane; usually stated as so many feet per mile, or as one foot rise or fall in so many of horizontal distance; as, a heavy grade; a grade of twenty feet per mile, or of 1 in 264.

(b)

A graded ascending, descending, or level portion of a road; a gradient.

3.

(Stock Breeding) The result of crossing a native stock with some better breed. If the crossbreed have more than three fourths of the better blood, it is called high grade.

At grade, on the same level; said of the crossing of a railroad with another railroad or a highway, when they are on the same level at the point of crossing.

Down grade, a descent, as on a graded railroad.

Up grade, an ascent, as on a graded railroad.

Equating for grades. See under Equate.

Grade crossing, a crossing at grade.

verb

Grade v. t. (past & past part. graded; pres. part. grading)

1.

To arrange in order, steps, or degrees, according to size, quality, rank, etc.

2.

To reduce to a level, or to an evenly progressive ascent, as the line of a canal or road.

3.

(Stock Breeding) To cross with some better breed; to improve the blood of.

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Etymology of 'Grade'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Grade" Quotes from Famous Books

... I, a bookman's son, and at certain periods of my life a bookman myself, though of lowly grade in that venerable class,—wonder not that I should thus, in that transition stage between youth and manhood, have turned impatiently from books. Most students, at one time or other in their existence, have felt the imperious demand of that restless principle in man's nature which calls ...

— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... portions of Iowa and Missouri. Yet, in the face of these known facts, we continue to treat our coal as though there could never be an end of it. The established coal-mining practice at the present date does not take out more than one-half the coal, leaving the less easily mined or lower grade material to be made permanently inaccessible by the caving in of the abandoned workings. The loss to the Nation from this form of waste ...

— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot

... for admiration as the great this, that or the other thing—it did not matter to him what, as long as he could be pointed out. But he never had the least idea of working for it. At school he was a sad dunce. He was three grades below Yan and at the bottom of his grade. They set out for school each day together, because that was a paternal ruling; but they rarely reached there together. They had nothing in common. Yan was full of warmth, enthusiasm, earnestness and energy, but had ...

— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... coasts of the Archipelago from the south and spread over the inland areas — succeeding waves of people, having more culture, driving their cruder blood fellows farther inland. Though originally of one blood, and though they are all to-day in a similar broad culture-grade — that is, all are mountain agriculturists, and all are, or until recently have been, head-hunters — yet it does not follow that the Igorot groups have to-day identical culture; quite the contrary is true. There are many and wide differences even in important cultural expressions ...

— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... stones, triodia, and mallee, a low eucalyptus of the gumtree family, growing generally in thick clumps from one root: its being rooted close together makes it difficult travelling to force one's way through. It grows about twenty feet high. The higher grade of eucalypts or gum-trees delight in water and a good soil, and nearly always line the banks of watercourses. The eucalypts of the mallee species thrive in deserts and droughts, but contain water in their roots which only the native inhabitants of ...

— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

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