adjective
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resembling, full of, or composed of grain; granular
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resembling the grain of wood, leather, etc
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photog having poor definition because of large grain size
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of grainy
Explanation
Something that's grainy feels rough to the touch, as though it's made of many tiny pieces. A piece of rough sandpaper feels grainy. Cornmeal is grainy, and your floor will feel grainy under your bare feet after your family returns from the beach with sand on their shoes. Grainy things are gritty, textured with little bumps or grains. You'll be disappointed if your birthday cake has a grainy texture. The earliest, thirteenth-century meaning of grainy was "scarlet dye," a result of its Old French root, which had several meanings including "seed" and "berry." The Latin origin is granum, "seed, grain, or small kernel."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Tournaments once so defined now blur into adulthood ambivalence, postcards plotted along the timeline of your life, the details growing grainy.
From BBC • Jun. 21, 2026
Visually, the film toggles between intimate 35mm black-and-white, grainy 16mm color and multi-purpose digital cameras that visually represent distinct eras.
From Los Angeles Times • May 15, 2026
The search for an American airman stranded behind enemy lines jolted the U.S., making what had been an abstract air war feel visceral beyond the grainy footage of explosions released by the White House.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 5, 2026
This is the modern American gothic: grainy photos taken on a MacBook of a teenage girl in a camouflage jacket, holding a gun, and posted on Tumblr.
From Salon • Apr. 3, 2026
A few Greeks, however, such as Democritus, held that matter was inherently grainy and that everything was made up of large numbers of various different kinds of atoms.
From "A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays" by Stephen Hawking
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
