Illustrative Context

He is grinding the nuts.

Target Sense

• The most generic transitive verb for grinding, in the following prototypical sense and context: to break up a hard, dry substance, particularly foodstuffs such as nuts, seeds or beans (e.g. coffee), into powdery or granular form, by a crushing, rotating action with a hard implement, typically stone (or metal) . The lexeme selected must be the basic term used in this prototypical case, although it may also be applicable more widely across other similar contexts.
• In many languages the same basic lexeme is used for turning cereal grains into flour. Where a language has a different lexeme specific to this case, however, then do not provide this narrower lexeme, but the more general one. So in English the correct English lexeme is thus more general grind, not narrower mill.
• In many languages an adjectival form derived from the same verb is used to describe the result: e.g. English grind -> ground (e.g. nuts, almonds, coffee); French moudre -> moulu; German mahlen -> gemahlen, etc..
• Avoid terms such as mash or pulp that refer to similar actions, but with moist or wet substances.
• Avoid terms such as pound or stamp that imply repeated directional blows, rather than the crushing, rotating movement of ‘grind’.
• Avoid terms such as squeeze, crush, that focus on prolonged pressure, rather than the process of reducing to granular form.
• Avoid intensifying terms with a specific emphasis on the desintegration or destruction, or that imply using particular force, e.g. German zermalmen.
• Avoid terms that focus on a ‘grinding’ noise, of hard objects in contact and friction, e.g. of brakes, teeth, etc..