Definition of "ground"

ground¹

/ɡɹaʊnd/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural grounds
1. The surface of the Earth, as opposed to the sky or water or underground.
  Quotations
  If the afternoon was fine they strolled together in the park, very slowly, and with pauses to draw breath wherever the ground sloped upward. The slightest effort made the patient cough.
  1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company
  Mind you, clothes were clothes in those days. […] Frills, ruffles, flounces, lace, complicated seams and gores: not only did they sweep the ground and have to be held up in one hand elegantly as you walked along, but they had little capes or coats or feather boas.
  1977, Agatha Christie, chapter 4, in An Autobiography, part II, London: Collins
  From the ground, Colombo’s port does not look like much. Those entering it are greeted by wire fences, walls dating back to colonial times and security posts.
  2013 June 8, “The new masters and commanders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 52
2. (uncountable) Terrain.
  Quotations
  As the terrain-following radar scans the ground ahead of the aircraft the actual clearance height is measured by the radio altimeter.
  1971, “The development of terrain following radar: an account of the progress made with an airborne guidance system for low flying military aircraft”, in Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology
3. Soil, earth.
4. (countable) The bottom of a body of water.
5. Basis, foundation, groundwork, legwork.
  Quotations
  Wyth cry unreverent,Before the sacrament,Wythin the holy church bowndis,That of our fayth the grownd is.
  c. 1503–1512, John Skelton, Ware the Hauke; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, 1983, page 62, lines 11–14
  [B]e the consequences what they may, they shall not move an inch, nor a hair's-breadth from the ground of their groundless spiritual independence, […]
  1840, Lewis Rose, chapter III, in An Humble Attempt to Put an End to the Present Divisions in the Church of Scotland, and to Promote Her Usefulness. […] ‎, Glasgow: George Gallie, page 51
6. (chiefly in the plural) Reason, (epistemic) justification, cause.
7. Background, context, framework, surroundings.
8. (historical) The area on which a battle is fought, particularly as referring to the area occupied by one side or the other. Often, according to the eventualities, "to give ground" or "to gain ground".
9. (figurative, by extension) Advantage given or gained in any contest; e.g. in football, chess, debate or academic discourse.
10. (in combination) A place suited to a specified activity.
  Quotations
  I gather from your last answer that at the present time the constabulary, to a certain extent, is good recruiting ground for the army?
  1876, Parliamentary Papers, volume 14, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, page 147
11. The plain surface upon which the figures of an artistic composition are set.
  Quotations
  […] to pad a piece in diluted acetate of alumine to obtain a pale lemon ground […]
  1819, Abraham Rees, The Cyclopædia
  One and All is the motto of the County of Cornwall, used below the coat-of-arms, which is a shield embracing fifteen bezants, or golden roundels, on a black ground; [...].
  1941 December, “The Why and the Wherefore: Cornish names of G.W.R. locomotives”, in Railway Magazine, page 575
12. (sculpture) A flat surface upon which figures are raised in relief.
13. (point lace) The net of small meshes upon which the embroidered pattern is applied.
14. (etching) A gummy substance spread over the surface of a metal to be etched, to prevent the acid from eating except where an opening is made by the needle.
15. (architecture, chiefly in the plural) One of the pieces of wood, flush with the plastering, to which mouldings etc. are attached.
16. (countable) A soccer stadium.
17. (electricity, Canada and US) An electrical conductor connected to the earth, or a large conductor whose electrical potential is taken as zero (such as a steel chassis).
  Quotations
  А ground may be undesirable, inadvertent, or accidental path taken by an electrical current; or it may be the deliberate provision of conductors well connected to the ground by means of plates buried therein, or similar device.
  1961, “GROUND”, in The International Dictionary of Physics and Electronics, 2nd edition, Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, page 539
18. (electricity, Philippines) Electric shock.
19. (countable, cricket) The area of grass on which a match is played (a cricket field); the entire arena in which it is played; the part of the field behind a batsman's popping crease where he can not be run out (hence to make one's ground).
20. (music) A composition in which the bass, consisting of a few bars of independent notes, is continually repeated to a varying melody.
21. (music) The tune on which descants are raised; the plain song.
  Quotations
  Buck[ingham] The Mayor is here at hand; pretend ſome fear, // Be not you ſpoke with, but by mighty ſuit; // And look you get a prayer-book in your hand, // And ſtand between two churchmen, good my lord, // For on that ground I’ll build a holy deſcant: // And be not eaſily won to our requeſts: // Play the maid’s part, ſtill anſwer nay, and take it.
  c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene vii]
22. The pit of a theatre.
  Quotations
  the understanding gentlemen o' the ground here ask'd my judgment
  1614 November 10 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), Beniamin Iohnson [i.e., Ben Jonson], Bartholmew Fayre: A Comedie, […], London: […] I[ohn] B[eale] for Robert Allot, […], published 1631, (please specify the page)
23. (India, obsolete) Synonym of munny (“land measure”)
  Quotations
  It is sub-divided into annas (or 16ths), of 3,600 square feet each; or when the land is for building purposes, into grounds (munnies) of 1/24 of a cawny each, as in the town of Madras.
  1885, Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency, page 515
verb
third-person singular simple present grounds, present participle grounding, simple past and past participle grounded
1. (US) To connect (an electrical conductor or device) to a ground.
  Quotations
  These geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) can become a hazard when they flow through conducting infrastructure, usually entering and exiting networks where equipment is grounded to Earth.
  2023 November 15, Prof. Jim Wild, “This train was delayed because of bad weather in space”, in RAIL, number 996, page 30
2. (Philippines) To electrocute.
3. (transitive) To punish, especially a child or teenager, by forcing them to stay at home and/or give up certain privileges.
4. (transitive) To forbid (an aircraft or pilot) to fly.
5. To give a basic education in a particular subject; to instruct in elements or first principles.
6. (baseball) To hit a ground ball. Compare fly (verb (regular)) and line (verb).
  Quotations
  [Ichiro Suzuki] went 0 for 4, popping out in foul territory, grounding out to second, and striking out looking. And then, in the top of the eighth inning with a runner on second, the “True Hit King” grounded out to short, just barely failing to beat it out.
  2019 March 21, Chris Cwik, “Ichiro Suzuki Goes Out in Style, Retires After Series in Japan”, in Yahoo! Sports‎
  The Twins scored three times in the eighth to make it 9-4 and loaded the bases with no outs. Jeurys Familia got Willians Astudillo to ground into a double play, limiting the damage.
  2019 April 10, Ben Walker (AP), “Twins Pitchers Go Wild, Syndergaard and Mets Stroll 9-6”, in Yahoo! Sports‎, archived from the original on 11 April 2019
7. To place something on the ground.
8. (intransitive) To run aground; to strike the bottom and remain fixed.
9. To found; to fix or set, as on a foundation, reason, or principle; to furnish a ground for; to fix firmly.
  Quotations
  being rooted and grounded in love
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Ephesians 3:17
  So far from warranting any inference to the existence of a God, would, on the contrary, ground even an argument to his negation.
  1859–1860, William Hamilton, edited by H[enry] L[ongueville] Mansel and John Veitch, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons
10. (fine arts) To cover with a ground, as a copper plate for etching, or as paper or other materials with a uniform tint as a preparation for ornament.
11. To improve or focus the mental or emotional state of.
12. (machine learning) To complement a machine learning model with relevant information it was not trained on.
  Quotations
  We design WikiChat (Figure 1) to ground LLMs using Wikipedia to achieve the following objectives. While LLMs tend to hallucinate, our chatbot should be factual.
  2023, Sina J. Semnani, Violet Z. Yao, Heidi C. Zhang, Monica S. Lam, “WikiChat: A Few-Shot LLM-Based Chatbot Grounded with Wikipedia”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)‎

ground²

/ɡɹaʊnd/

verb
1. simple past and past participle of grind
adjective
not comparable
1. Crushed, or reduced to small particles.
  Quotations
  Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of Ahab's iron soul.
  1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick‎
  The intestinal contents of F. Stellifer seem finely ground in comparison to those of F. catenatus, probably as a result of chewing with the stout pharyngeal molars.
  1969, Tulane Studies in Zoology and Botany‎, volume 16, page 16
  Powder mixing and grinding are complete when the powder is homogenous and grey-black in color, appears finely ground, and feels smooth.
  2018, S Sivakumar, E Zwier, PB Meisenheimer…, “Bulk and Thin Film Synthesis of Compositionally Variant Entropy-stabilized Oxides”, in Journal of Visualized Experiments
2. Processed by grinding.
  Quotations
  the traces of wear have the appearance of dull patches that look ground.
  1985, Sergeĭ Aristarkhovich Semenov, Prehistoric Technology: An Experimental Study of the Oldest Tools and Artefacts from Traces of Manufacture and Wear‎, page 14
  The axial perforation, the handle socket and the quern base are all rough and do not appear ground or polished
  2000, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland‎, page 258
  An advantage of such a finishing tool is that, after the machining, the workpiece has high surface quality. The surface which is produced appears finely ground to polished by means of this procedure.
  2018, H Glimpel, HJ Lauffer, A Bremstahler, Finishing Tool, In Particular End Milling Cutter, US Patent App. 15/764,739

Definition of "ground"

ground1

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ground2

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ground¹

ground²