What does grateful mean?
Word: Grateful
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Grateful means feeling thankful to someone who has been kind to you or has helped you.
Synonyms: thankful, appreciative, obliged
Antonyms: ungrateful
How do you spell grateful?
Syllables: grate - ful
Tricky part: It sounds as if it begins with the word great, but the first part is spelt like grate, the thing you do to cheese.
Watch out for: gratful, graitful, greatful
Memory tip: Think of a cheese grater: grater and grateful share their first five letters, g-r-a-t-e.
Grateful in a sentence
Example 1: I am grateful to my coach for staying back to help me practise.
Example 2: The traveller was grateful for a glass of cold water at the roadside cafe.
Example 3: We wrote a card to the school nurse to show how grateful we were.
Fun Fact
Grateful comes from the Latin word gratus, meaning pleasing or thankful, the same root that gives us gratitude and congratulate.
Practise the CREST Way
Spell-o-Spell
Choose the correctly spelt word:
a) genuin
b) grateful
c) gracius
d) generus
Show answer
b) grateful. Generous and gracious both end in ous, and genuine has a final e.
Word Cookie
Find the misspelt word in the sentence:
Ines was gratefull to the neighbour who watered her plants during the holidays.
a) watered
b) gratefull
c) neighbour
d) holidays
Show answer
b) gratefull. The ending ful never takes a second l, so gratefull is wrong.
Word Connection
Choose the antonym of the word: grateful
a) thankless
b) pleased
c) polite
d) indebted
Show answer
a) thankless. A thankless person gives no thanks at all; someone indebted, pleased or polite may still feel thankful.
Mingle-Mangle
Form a meaningful word from the jumbled letters:
frtgealu
a) fateful
b) grateful
c) regretful
d) graceful
Show answer
b) grateful. Graceful needs a c, fateful a second f and regretful two e's, so these eight letters make only grateful.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. What is the best way to show that you are grateful?
a) forgiving your brother for a broken toy
b) saying sorry to a friend you upset
c) congratulating a classmate on her prize
d) thanking a neighbour who fed your cat
Show answer
d) thanking a neighbour who fed your cat
2. Which sentence uses grateful correctly?
a) I was grateful to Aunt Rita for the lift home.
b) We had a grateful time at the fair on Sunday.
c) He was grateful of the dark and would not go out.
d) The dancer moved in a grateful way across the stage.
Show answer
a) I was grateful to Aunt Rita for the lift home.
