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'Great' means excellent, important, or large; 'grate' means to shred food, make a harsh sound, or is a metal grid.
Side-by-side comparison
"Great" describes something excellent, of considerable size, or of great importance. "Great job" = excellent work. "The Great Wall" = of enormous scale. "That's great!" = that is wonderful.
That was a great presentation, very clear and well-structured.
Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world.
We had a great time at the team dinner last Friday.
"Grate" as a verb is to shred food with a grater, or to make a harsh scraping sound. "It grates on me" = it irritates me. As a noun: the metal grid in a fireplace or over a drain.
Grate the cheese finely before adding it to the sauce.
The sound of the chair scraping grated on my nerves.
She cleaned the grate in the fireplace before lighting a fire.
Common mistake
- •"That sounds grate!" as an enthusiastic response is wrong: the adjective for excellent is "great".
- •"Grate the cheese" is correct for shredding: the verb for shredding is "grate".
Trick to remember it
- •"Great" has EA like "steak", "break", and "treat": all enjoyable things.
- •"Grate" has just A for "abrasive": the harsh sound or the grater that scrapes.
Quick rule
- •Is it excellent, large, or important? "Great".
- •Is it shredding food or a harsh sound? "Grate".
Did you know?
"Great Britain" uses "great" in the sense of LARGE, not excellent, it distinguishes the larger island (Britain) from smaller Brittany in France. "Alexander the Great" and "the Great Wall" also use "great" for impressive scale, not quality. The use of "Great!" as an enthusiastic exclamation is mainly a 20th-century development that spread globally through American culture. Before that, English tended to use "Splendid!", "Capital!", "Excellent!", which today sound very old-fashioned or comically formal.
Practise what you learned
Exercise 1 · Pick the right one
Please _____ some cheese over the pasta. It needs more flavour.
Exercise 2 · Pick the right one
She is a _____ teacher. All her students love her classes.
Exercise 3 · Form the word
Related word pairs
One means to receive or agree to something, the other means to exclude or not include.
'Advice' is the guidance you receive (noun); 'advise' is the act of giving that guidance (verb).
'Affect' is the verb meaning to influence something; 'effect' is the noun meaning result or consequence.
'Aisle' is the walkway between rows of seats or shelves; 'isle' is a small island.
Bryan López
Founder of SpeakUP Academy