Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA small, round, smooth-skinned edible fruit, usually purple, red, or green, that grows in bunches on vines of genus Vitis.
nounA small, round, smooth-skinned edible fruit, usually purple, red, or green, that grows in bunches on female vines of most species of genus Vitis and the self-fertile plants of species Vitis vinifera.
Sentence Examples
I like grape jelly best.
Ivo saw the grape.
Would you like to drink a glass of grape juice?
CEFR Practice Quiz
He ate one sweet ____ from the bunch on the table.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
He plucked a single green ____ from the bunch and enjoyed its sweet and juicy flavor as a healthy snack.
Word Origin & History
Inherited from Middle English grape, borrowed from Old French grappe (“cluster of fruit or flowers, bunch of grapes”), deverbal from graper (“to pick grapes”, literally “to hook”), borrowed from Frankish *krappō (“to hook”), from Proto-Indo-European *greb- (“hook”) or *gremb- (“crooked, uneven”)., from *ger- (“to turn, bend, twist”) Displaced Old English wīnberġe (“grape”, literally “wine-berry”). Cognate with Middle Dutch krappe (“hook”), Old High German krapfo (“hook”) (whence German Krapfen (“Berliner doughnut”). Doublet of grappa. More at cramp.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"The boarding-nettings were up, the guns double-shotted with grape and canister, and the swivels loaded with canisters of musket-balls."
— 1838, [Edgar Allan Poe], chapter XX, in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, pages 165–166:
"I was horrified to see three grapes standing by the aircraft with the hose still connected."
— 1998, Approach, volume 43, number 10, page 10:
"I used to go graping and blackberrying and blueberrying."
— 1973, Nancy Safford, Time's Island; Portraits of the Vineyard, page 35:
"Some are called ticked; some have the milk fever; some have worm-'ith-tail ; some are graped ; others are broken-up old cows."
— 1856, House of Commons of the United Kingdom, Reports from Committees, page 138:
"The lungs were in a bad condition, hard in places, and lumpy and badly graped."
— 1891, Public Health - Volume 4, page 249: