ground
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɡɹaʊnd/
ipa: /ɡɹʊnd/
rhymes: -aʊnd
Forms: form: grounds
form: grounding
form: grounded
form: grounded
form: GND
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *gʰrem-der.
Proto-Germanic *grunduz
Old English grund
Middle English ground
English ground
From Middle English ground, from Old English grund, from Proto-West Germanic *grundu, from Proto-Germanic *grunduz. Cognate with West Frisian grûn, Dutch grond and German Grund.
Senses: examples: text: These geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) can become a hazard when they flow through conducting infrastructure, usually entering and exiting networks where equipment is grounded to Earth.
ref: 2023 November 15, Prof. Jim Wild, “This train was delayed because of bad weather in space”, in RAIL, number 996, page 30:
synonyms: earth
glosses: To connect (an electrical conductor or device) to a ground.
glosses: To electrocute.
examples: text: If you don't clean your room, I'll have no choice but to ground you.
text: Eric, you are grounded until further notice for lying to us about where you were last night!
text: My kids are currently grounded from television.
synonyms: gate
glosses: To punish, especially a child or teenager, by forcing them to stay at home and/or give up certain privileges.
examples: text: Because of the bad weather, all flights were grounded.
glosses: To forbid (an aircraft or pilot) to fly.
examples: text: Jim was grounded in maths.
glosses: To give a basic education in a particular subject; to instruct in elements or first principles.
topics: ball-games
cricket
games
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: To place a bat or part of the body on the ground to avoid being run out.
examples: text: [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.
ref: 2019 March 21, Chris Cwik, “Ichiro Suzuki Goes Out in Style, Retires After Series in Japan”, in Yahoo! Sports:
text: 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.
ref: 2019 April 10, Ben Walker (AP), “Twins Pitchers Go Wild, Syndergaard and Mets Stroll 9-6”, in Yahoo! Sports, archived from the original on 11 Apr 2019:
topics: ball-games
baseball
games
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: To hit a ground ball. Compare fly (verb (regular)) and line (verb).
glosses: To place something on the ground.
examples: text: The ship grounded on the bar.
glosses: To run aground; to strike the bottom and remain fixed.
examples: text: being rooted and grounded in love
ref: 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ephesians 3:17:
text: So far from warranting any inference to the existence of a God, would, on the contrary, ground even an argument to his negation.
ref: 1859–1860, William Hamilton, edited by H[enry] L[ongueville] Mansel and John Veitch, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC:
glosses: To found; to fix or set, as on a foundation, reason, or principle; to furnish a ground for; to fix firmly.
qualifier: fine arts
glosses: 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.
examples: text: I ground myself with meditation.
glosses: To improve or focus the mental or emotional state of.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 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):
text: But the technology has evolved rapidly over the past year or so. Today’s systems can incorporate real-time search and use increasingly sophisticated methods for “grounding”—connecting AI outputs to specific, verifiable knowledge and sourced analysis.
ref: 2025 May 9, Mike Caulfield, “AI Is Not Your Friend”, in The Atlantic:
qualifier: machine learning
glosses: To complement a machine learning model with relevant information it was not trained on.
Derived terms: grounation
groundable
groundation
misground
reground
unground