Grounde

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An obsolete past tense and participle of grind, describing something that was crushed or worn down into fine particles
2. A dated form of the past tense of grind, referring to material that has been pulverized into powder or fragments
3. Archaic past participle of grind, used of something reduced to small bits by pressing or rubbing against a hard surface

Etymology: "Grounde" is simply an obsolete spelling of "ground", so its story is the story of "ground" itself. The noun traces back through Middle English "ground" to Old English "grund", which carried the sense of the bottom of a sea, a lake, or a river, as well as the solid surface beneath our feet. That watery origin is worth noticing: the earth's surface was once defined partly by what lay beneath water. The word's roots reach deep into Germanic. Old English "grund" came from a Proto-West Germanic form, "grundu", and before that from Proto-Germanic "grunduz", and it has close relatives in modern Dutch "grond", German "Grund", and West Frisian "grûn". The shared sense across these languages is a foundation or base. Older English spellings like "grounde" simply reflect the medieval habit of writing the final vowel, which was gradually dropped as the language settled into its modern form.