grating1
/ˈɡreɪtɪŋ
/adjective
1Sounding harsh and unpleasant: her high, grating voice...
- After a few seconds, a harsh grating voice came out of the speakers above the door.
- The man had rambled at her too, in a gravely, grating voice, explaining who he was and where he was taking her.
- The rough grating voices tore through the darkness and pierced his ears.
Synonyms
scraping, scratching, grinding, rasping, creaking, jarring, abrasive
harsh, raucous, strident, piercing, shrill, ear-piercing, screeching, squawking, squawky, squeaky, sharp;
discordant, dissonant, cacophonous;
brassy, blaring;
hoarse, croaky, rough, gravelly
1.1Irritating: his grating confrontational personality...
- It was an annoying, grating tweet designed specifically to get on the nerves of someone trying to stay asleep.
- ‘Oh, please,’ she begged in that grating voice that she seemed to instinctively know really got on his nerves.
- His grating voice, frameless spectacles, faded suits and short, stringy hair all broke with the conformist protest style.
Synonyms
irritating, annoying, infuriating, rankling, vexatious, irksome, galling, exasperating, maddening, displeasing;
jarring, discordant, inharmonious, out of place, unsuitable, inappropriate, ill suited;
tiresome, troublesome, niggling, disagreeable, unpleasant, offensive
informal aggravating
Derivatives
gratingly
- Secondly and most gratingly, the immediate acknowledging of possible objectionability after you have done or said something potentially offensive does not actually neutralise your action.
- An overly facile change of heart here, an incongruous turn in the plot there - it's just enough to make us gratingly aware that the filmmakers ran out of patience or ingenuity.
- The worldliness of her books can be gratingly self-conscious at times, but it's never snotty.
Rhymes
grating2
/ˈɡreɪtɪŋ/noun
1A framework of parallel or crossed bars, typically preventing access through an opening while permitting communication or ventilation.Suddenly, something thudded against the grating that covered the opening....
- A welded grating prevents anyone from straying deeper into the adjoining caves.
- Toilet cubicles will need to be more spacious than usual, and gratings fitted to the floors to prevent accidental flooding.
Synonyms
framework, grid, grate, network, grille, grillwork, lattice, trellis, criss-cross, matrix;
mesh, gauze, netting, net, web, webbing, tracery, interlacing, reticulation, reticulum
technical plexus, graticule, decussation
1.1 (also diffraction grating) Optics A set of equally spaced parallel wires, or a surface ruled with equally spaced parallel lines, used to produce spectra by diffraction.The etched etalon filter used in our single mode design has broader spectral characteristics than the gratings used in a typical DFB laser, which makes it less effective at filtering off-peak wavelengths....
- For narrow spectral bandwidth gratings, dimensional variations must be minimized or compensated, and the grating is apodized by both a.c. and d.c. variations in writing beams at a net constant power.
- Seminal work on the diffraction grating was done by Joseph von Fraunhofer beginning in 1821, who demonstrated that the gratings could produce spectra of unprecedented quality.