Other forms: grands, grander, grandest
Grand means big and impressive in a stately way — a grand house, a grand entrance, grand plans. It carries a sense of scale and a little of ceremony.
It is also used ironically as often as it is used straight: grand ideas and grand gestures are usually being gently mocked. Two other senses are common. In informal British and American English, a grand is a thousand pounds or dollars — it cost five grand — and it does not take a plural s. And grand appears as a title of rank or size in a long list of fixed compounds: grand piano, grand total, grandmaster, grand slam. Grandeur is the noun, and it is not a compliment when applied to somebody's manner.
1adjectivegrandLarge and impressive.
“They live in a grand house with too many rooms.”
synonyms: magnificent, imposing, stately
2adjectiveintendedIntended to seem important, often more than it is.
“He has grand plans and no money.”
3nounthousandA thousand pounds or dollars.
“The car cost him six grand.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
grand is a quality of scale.
Also accepted in games: magnificent
Latin grandis meant full-grown and large, and it competed with magnus for centuries before French carried it into English. The family relationships — grandmother, grandson — use the same word in the sense of a generation further out, which French still says the same way.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰer-
Latin
grandis
Old French
grant
Anglo-Norman
graunt
Middle English
grand
English, today
grand
From Middle English grand, grond, graund, graunt, from Anglo-Norman graunt, from Old French grant, from Latin grandis. a doublet of grande and grandee.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA