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To me, the verb "to ground" seems inappropriate for this site, and I'd normally consider it simply a minor mistake or typo, but in What gives Turkish coffee that unique "quality"? it appears in the original question, in two answers, and in a comment:

OP:

  • grounded coffee
  • I asked the seller to ground my coffee

Answer 1:

  • finely grounded
  • after the grounding
  • the finer the grounding

Answer 2:

  • very fine grounded
  • fine grounded coffee
  • it is grounded so fine

Comment:

  • other 'turkish' grounded coffee

Other than this one word, all of the submissions are written in good English, so its usage seems to be deliberate.

I know that there is a verb "to ground" in electrical technology, but is there some coffee-technical verb "to ground" that I haven't heard of before?

Ray Butterworth
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  • Isn´t it to grind? – Martin Peters Oct 07 '23 at 13:42
  • @MartinPeters says "Isn´t it to grind?". That's what I would have thought, but here are three people all using the different term several times, consistently and without any other noticeable spelling or grammar problems. – Ray Butterworth Oct 07 '23 at 15:54
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    Not sure it warrants a full answer, but: No, there’s no particular meaning. We do have an international user base and for many contributors English isn’t their first (and often not even the second or third) language. So some hiccups particularly with irregular verbs (there’s a reason teachers work on that topic a lot) are to be expected. Seems community editing hasn’t caught it yet. – Stephie Oct 07 '23 at 18:04
  • @Stephie says "Seems community editing hasn’t caught it yet". That's actually what started this in the first place. I was about to correct it in the question, but then noticed that the two answers used it the same way, so wondered whether it was in fact correct. (I also just realized that I don't have nearly enough reputation on this SE site to make minor corrections without being a nuisance, so perhaps it's good that I didn't change it.) Feel free to delete this (my) question. – Ray Butterworth Oct 07 '23 at 19:26
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    @RayButterworth I will not, as a mod, delete a question that’s perfectly fine and legitimate (even if the answer is simply “it’s a mistake”), as we have established. As the asker, you may delete your own question, as long as the question has no answer. – Stephie Oct 10 '23 at 10:57

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It's a common grammatical mistake. As our audience grows we may continue to see grammatical errors and that's ok. We can fix it up by suggesting edits. Or sometimes you can even just ignore it if the meaning is clear enough. It's good to fix up mistakes. But it is also good to be nice.

The standard English declension is:

verb infinitive: (to) grind

present tense indicative:
[ I, we, you, they ] grind the coffee.
[ He, she ] grinds the coffee.

past tense:
[ I, we, you, he, she, they ] ground the coffee.

past participle (also, adjective): ground
Eg. "One pound of finely ground coffee."

related: (the) grind or grain, often refers to the size of the particles. Thus "fine grind" means "finely ground".

Mnemonic: "grounded" means your airplane cannot fly. :)

luser droog
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