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Citation Information
How to Cite
Ammer, Christine. "against the grain." Writer's Reference Center. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 14 Apr. 2025. <http://fofweb.infobase.com/wrc/Detail.aspx?iPin=DOC00017>.
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against the grain

Definition 
"There was something about Prohibition that went against the American grain," a high school history teacher once said, quite innocent of her pun on this phrase, which means contrary to expectations, custom, or common sense. The literal meaning, against the natural direction of the fibers in a piece of wood, was turned figurative by Shakespeare in Coriolanus ("Preoccupied with what you rather must do than what you should, made you against the grain to voice him consul"). By the time Dickens used it in Edwin Drood (1870) it probably was already a cliché.

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