grate
v.v. to rub food against a metal tool with sharp holes to cut it into very small pieces. You usually do this with cheese or vegetables like carrots.
v. to reduce food to small shreds or fragments by rubbing it against a serrated surface.
Please grate some cheese for the pasta.
The recipe says to grate the ginger finely before adding it to the hot oil for the best flavor.
While some chefs prefer to grate the zest directly into the batter, others recommend collecting it separately to ensure no bitter white pith is included in the mixture.
From Middle English grate, from a Medieval Latin crāta, from a Latin word for a hurdle; or Italian grata, from Latin cratis.
From Middle English graten, from Old French grater (“to scrape”) ( > French gratter), from Frankish krattōn, from Proto-Germanic krattōną. Cognate with Old High German krazzon ( > German kratzen (“to scrawl”) > Danish kradse), Icelandic krassa (“to scrawl”) and Danish kratte.
From Latin grātus (“agreeable”).
The verb is transitive and typically takes a food item as its direct object.
I used a grater for grate the cheeseI used a grater to grate the cheeseLearners often confuse the preposition 'for' with the infinitive 'to' when expressing the purpose of a tool.