gross
Forms
- Comparative
- grosser
- Superlative
- grossest
- Plural
- gross
- present (v1)
- gross
- past (v2)
- grossed
- past participle (v3)
- grossed
- present participle
- grossing
- 3rd person singular
- grosses
Definitions
1.remarkably great, big, vast in an often unpleasant way; (of behaviour) Highly or conspicuously offensive.
- Your very faults, how gross soere, to me / Have something pleasing in ’em.
2.Excluding any deductions; including all associated amounts.
- But please notice that even these wretched earnings are gross earnings. On top of this there are all kinds of stoppages which are deducted from the miner's wages every week.
3.Seen without a microscope (usually for a tissue or an organ); at a large scale; not detailed.
- We are accustomed to look for the gross and immediate effect and to ignore all else. Unless this appears promptly and in such obvious form that it cannot be ignored, we deny the existence of hazard.
4.Causing disgust.(informal)
- I threw up all over the bed. It was totally gross.
- The next-door neighbor’s cat coughed up a hairball one day and the hair was not the cat’s. “That’s so gross!”
- Mary Ann spent her lunch hour at Hastings, picking out just the right tie for Norman. The hint might not be terribly subtle, she decided, but somebody had to do something about that gross, gravy-stained clip-on number.
1.Twelve dozen = 144.
- We need to order three gross of torx screws for next week.
2.The total amount (of goods, money, etc) before taxes, expenses, exceptions, tares, or similar deductions are subtracted.
3.The bulk; the mass.
1.To earn money, not including expenses.
- The movie grossed three million on the first weekend.
- The film grossed $464 million worldwide, ensconcing her in the Hollywood A-list.
Frequency
Overall
Rare· #4119
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Rare
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
Etymology
From Middle English gros (“large, thick, full-bodied; coarse, unrefined, simple”)
From Old French gros
From Latin grossus (“big, fat, thick”, in Late Latin also “coarse, rough”), of uncertain further origin but perhaps related to Proto-Celtic *brassos (“great, violent”).