A kitchen tool with a rough surface used to shred cheese, vegetables, or other food into small pieces.
From grate (to rub harshly) + -er (tool that does something). Grate comes from Old French grater, from Germanic origins meaning to scrape.
The box grater's four-sided design became ubiquitous in the 1900s because it solved a real problem—different grater sizes for different textures all in one tool, maximizing kitchen efficiency.
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