Definition

1. Noun:

   • The act of joining one thing to another: "graft" can refer to the process of attaching a part from one plant onto another so they grow together.
   • The practice of bribery or corruption: In informal contexts, "graft" means the use of illicit means, especially money, to gain an unfair advantage.
   • Transplanted tissue or organ: In medicine, a "graft" is a piece of living tissue or an organ that is transplanted.

2. Verb:

   • To transplant living tissue: To attach a piece of tissue or an organ from one body to another.
   • To join plants together: To insert a shoot or bud from one plant into another so they unite and grow as one.

Usage Examples

• Noun:

  • The gardener performed a graft to combine two varieties of roses.
  • The politician was accused of graft for accepting money in exchange for contracts.
  • The patient received a skin graft after the burn.

• Verb:

  • Surgeons will graft the donor's kidney into the patient.
  • He learned how to graft a peach branch onto a plum tree.

Advanced Usage

• "Hard graft": This idiom refers to hard, often physical, work.
  • Success in this business comes from years of hard graft.

Variants and Related Words

• Grafting (n): The process or technique of making a graft.
  • Bud grafting is a common horticultural technique.
• Grifter (n): A person who engages in petty swindling or graft (in the corrupt sense). This is a related but distinct word.
  • The con artist was a skilled grifter.

Synonyms

• Noun (for corruption): Corruption, bribery, payoff.
• Noun (for transplant): Transplant, implant.
• Verb (for joining plants): Bud, splice, inoculate.

Related Phrasal Verbs

(Note: "Graft" is not commonly used in phrasal verb constructions. Its meanings are typically expressed directly.)

Related Idioms

• "Graft onto": To attach or add something to something else, often in a way that it becomes part of it.
  • The new regulations were grafted onto the existing law.

Noun

1. the act of grafting something onto something else
2. the practice of offering something (usually money) in order to gain an illicit advantage
3. (surgery) tissue or organ transplanted from a donor to a recipient; in some cases the patient can be both donor and recipient

Verb

1. place the organ of a donor into the body of a recipient
2. cause to grow together parts from different plants
   • graft the cherry tree branch onto the plum tree