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grain: grain: [13] Grain comes via Old French from Latin grānum ‘seed’. Its prehistoric Indo- European ancestor was *grnóm, literally ‘worndown particle’, which also produced English corn, and it has given English a remarkably wide range of related forms: not just obvious derivatives like granary [16], granule [17], and ingrained [16], but also garner [12] (originally a noun derived from Latin grānārium ‘granary’), gram ‘chick-pea’ [18] (from the Portuguese descendant of grānum, now mainly encountered in ‘gram flour’), grange, granite, gravy, grenade, and the second halves of filigree and pomegranate.
=> filigree, garner, granary, granite, gravy, grenade, ingrained, pomegranate
ingrain: ingrain: [17] Ingrain means literally ‘work into the grain’ (of fabric, originally) – whence the main metaphorical sense of ingrained, ‘deepseated’. But there is much more to the story of ingrain than that. Its ultimate source was engrainer ‘dye’, an Old French verb based on graine ‘cochineal dye’. English borrowed this in the 14th century as engrain ‘dye crimson with cochineal’, which remained a live sense of the word into the 17th century.

Gradually awareness of the word’s original specific connections with the colour crimson died out, and the verb was virtually formed anew in the mid 17th century using the concept of the grain or ‘texture’ of cloth, but the spelling engrain remained, and remains as a secondary variant to this day, to remind us of the word’s origins.
=> grain
migraine: migraine: [14] The earliest English forms of this word were mygrame and mygrane, but eventually it became institutionalized as megrim. Not until the 18th century did what is now the standard form, migraine, begin to appear on the scene, probably as a reborrowing of the word’s original source, French migraine. This came via late Latin hēmicrānia from Greek hēmikrāníā, literally ‘half-skull’ (krāníon is the source of English cranium [16], and is distantly related to English horn). The etymological idea underlying the word is of ‘pain in one side of the head’.
=> cranium, horn
engrain (v.): also ingrain, late 14c., originally "dye (a fabric) red with cochineal," from French phrase en graine, from graine "seed of a plant," also "cochineal" (the source of the dye was thought to be berries), thus "fast-dyed." See grain; also compare kermes. Later associated with grain in the sense of "the fiber of a thing." Used figuratively from 16c. Related: Engrained.
grail (n.): c. 1300, gral, "the Holy Grail," from Old French graal, greal "Holy Grail; cup," earlier "large shallow dish, basin," from Medieval Latin gradalis, also gradale, grasale, "a flat dish or shallow vessel." The original form is uncertain; the word is perhaps ultimately from Latin crater "bowl," which is from Greek krater "bowl, especially for mixing wine with water" (see crater (n.)).

Holy Grail is anglicized from Middle English seint gral (c. 1300), also sangreal, sank-real (c. 1400), which seems to show deformation as if from sang real "royal blood" (that is, the blood of Christ) The object had been inserted into the Celtic Arthurian legends by 12c., perhaps in place of some pagan otherworldly object. It was said to be the cup into which Joseph of Arimathea received the last drops of blood of Christ (according to the writers who picked up the thread of Chrétien de Troyes' "Perceval") or the dish from which Christ ate the Last Supper (Robert de Boron), and ultimately was identified as both ("þe dische wiþ þe blode," "Joseph of Aramathie," c. 1350?).
grain (n.): early 14c., "a small, hard seed," especially of one of the cereal plants, also as a collective singular, "seed of wheat and allied grasses used as food;" also "something resembling grain; a hard particle of other substances" (salt, sand, later gunpowder, etc.), from Old French grain, grein (12c.) "seed, grain; particle, drop; berry; grain as a unit of weight," from Latin granum "seed, a grain, small kernel," from PIE root *gre-no- "grain" (see corn (n.1)). From late 14c. as "a species of cereal plant." In the U.S., where corn has a specialized sense, it is the general word (used of wheat, rye, oats, barley, etc.).

Figuratively, "the smallest possible quantity," from late 14c. From early 15c. in English as the smallest unit of weight (originally the weight of a plump, dry grain of wheat or barley from the middle of the ear). From late 14c as "roughness of surface; a roughness as of grains." In reference to wood, "quality due to the character or arrangement of its fibers," 1560s; hence, against the grain (1650), a metaphor from carpentry: cutting across the fibers of the wood is more difficult than cutting along them.

Earliest sense of the word in English was "scarlet dye made from insects" (early 13c.), a sense also in the Old French collateral form graine; see kermes for the evolution of this sense, which was frequent in Middle English; also compare engrain. In Middle English grain also could mean "seed of flowers; pip of an apple, grape, etc.; a berry, legume, nut." Grain alcohol attested by 1854.
grained: in compounds, "having grains" (of a specified kind), 1520s; see grain (n.).
grainy (adj.): 1610s, "full of grains," from grain + -y (2). Photographic sense is from 1900. In Middle English, grain also was used as an adjective, "like grain, lumpy, spotted" (early 15c.). Related: Graininess.
ingrain (v.): 1766, see engrain. Figurative use, of qualities, habits, etc., attested from 1851 (in ingrained). Of dyed carpets, etc., 1766, from in grain.
migraine (n.): late 14c., megrim, from Old French migraigne (13c.), from vulgar pronunciation of Late Latin hemicrania "pain in one side of the head, headache," from Greek hemikrania, from hemi- "half" + kranion "skull" (see cranium). The Middle English form was re-spelled 1777 on the French model. Related: Migrainous.
sangrail (n.): "the Holy Grail," mid-15c., from Old French Saint Graal, literally "Holy Grail" (see saint (n.) + grail).