English
Etymology
Compare French :fr:granulaire|granulaire. See granule
Adjective
en-adj
- Consisting of, or resembling, grains; as, a granular substance. Grainy. Granular limestone, crystalline limestone, or marble, having a granular structure.
Usage notes
A common usage error is to treat the term "granular" as having a well-defined degree, as in "more granular" or "less granular". Such usage is problematic for two reasons:
The essential characteristic of being granular is that something is composed of discrete entities as opposed to being continuous, and this is a binary distinction, not a matter of degree.
The terms "more granular" and "less granular" are inherently ambiguous: it is not clear whether they intend to indicate finer or coarser granularity. For example, granular sugar is called granular because it is composed of relatively large grains, in contrast with powdered sugar, whose grains are so small that they are not noticeable. Thus, in reference to sugar, "more granular" would refer to coarser granularity. Similarly, if a photograph is "more grainy", it means that the grain particles are larger (coarser) and thus more distinctly visible to the naked eye. Since "grainy" is a synonym for "granular", "more granular" would again refer to coarser granularity in this context. On the other hand, "more granular" is sometimes used in exactly the opposite way: to indicate more plentiful divisions into finer grains.
This usage error can be avoided by instead referring specifically to finer or coarser granularity.
Quotations
1790, Abraham Mills, Some Strata in Ireland and Scotland, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 80
:This Whyn Dyke is bare at the cliffs ſeveral yards in height, and is near nine feet in width. It conſiſts of an inner part of a granular and ſomewhat porous texture...
References
Webster 1913
Category:Spanish verbs ending in -ar
gl:granular
io:granular
te:granular
vi:granular
zh:granular
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