grater

What it means

1. a tool with which one grates, especially foods such as cheese, to facilitate getting small particles or shreds off a solid lump

   I'm making coleslaw; do you know where the grater is?

   1 more example

   As she ran on her numerous errands Jessamy found that if she did not stop to think, she knew all kinds of odd little things that the other Jessamy must have learned, such as where the nutmeg grater lived, and which was the potato peeling knife.

   1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 115

In a sentence

I'm making coleslaw; do you know where the grater is?

Where it comes from

1. Old Frenchgrateor
2. Englishgrater

From Old French grateor. See grate. By surface analysis, grate (“to scrape, etc.”) + -er.