gridiron

plural gridirons

1. An instrument of torture on which people were secured before being burned by fire.First known use 13th c.

   1 more example

   I know, there have been found seely boores, who have rather endure to have their feet broiled upon a Greedyron, their fingers ends crusht and wrung with the lock of a Pistoll, their eyes all bloody to be thrust out of their heads with wringing and wresting of a cord about their foreheads, before they would so much as be ransomed.

   1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 32, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC

2. An iron rack or grate used for broiling meat and fish over coals.First known use 14th c.

plural gridirons

1. countableuncountableAny object resembling the rack or grate.First known use 15th c.

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   Just north of Farringdon station, and to the east of Ray Street, there is a wide cutting bounded by another of those brick walls nicely calculated to be just too high for you to see over. So prop your bike against it, and stand on the down-pointing pedal crank. You are looking at the Ray Street Gridiron, a spectacular bridge in a cutting that carries the Metropolitan, the supposed Underground, over the Widened Lines (now Thameslink).

   2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 55

2. countableuncountablenauticalAn openwork frame on which vessels are placed for examination, cleaning, and repairs.
3. countableuncountableentertainmentA raised framework from which lighting is suspended.
4. countableuncountableAmerican footballThe field on which American football is played.First known use 19th c.

   They were quite close to him now, and crouching low, like tacklers on a gridiron. One of them raised his hand and lowered it, as though counting off seconds—one—two—three!

   1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 104

   Synonyms: football field

5. AustraliaNew ZealanduncountableAmerican and Canadian football, particularly when used to distinguish from other codes of football.

   2009, Deborah Healey, Sport and the Law, reference note, UNSW Press, page 271, 119 Yasser (1985) cites the famous US example of gridiron player Dick Butkus of the Chicago Bears.

   2 more examples

   1995 October 3, Peter O′Shea, Sports: Out on the field, The Advocate, page 54, He represented Australia in this year′s rugby tour of England and is as well-known in Australia as any top gridiron player is in the United States.

   So Jackie′s name became known far and wide as an exceptional gridiron player.

   2001, Langston Hughes, Dolan Hubbard, Jackie Robinson: First Negro in Big League Baseball: 1919—: The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 12: Works for Children and Young Adults, page 106

present singular third person gridirons · participle present gridironing · participle past gridironed · past gridironed

1. To mark or cover with lines; to crisscross.

   Railways spanned the continent and gridironed the states.

   2012, Janet Wallach, chapter 8, in The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age, New York: Anchor Books, published 2013, page 111

   4 more examples

   This basin of Szechuan (literally "Four Streams," but which, reading the character idiographically, I should be inclined to render as "Gridironed by Streams"), […]

   1901, Archibald John Little, Mount Omi and Beyond: A Record of Travel on the Thibetan Border, Cambridge University Press, published 2010, Conclusion, p. 242

   Another logical method is that of gridironing the field by a series of straight paths that are parallel to each other.

   1923, Maximilian P.E. Groszmann, A Parent's Manual: Child Problems, Mental and Moral, New York: Century, page 74

   When Billy saw the culprit's naked back under the scourge gridironed with red welts, and worse […] Billy was horrified.

   1924, Herman Melville, chapter 8, in Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co.

   His white back, gridironed with scars, was as soft as a baby's.

   1949, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 42, in The God-Seeker, New York: Popular Library, page 227

2. New ZealandhistoricalTo purchase land so that the remaining adjacent sections are smaller than the minimum area purchasable as freehold, thus excluding potential freeholders.