grand [ME] This borrowing of the French for ‘large, tall’ is found as a nickname from 1125, but not until c.1350 in the sense ‘great, important’. Also borrowed directly from French is the use of grand in combinations to refer to people two generations apart, as in grandfather [LME], grandmother [LME], and grandchild [M17th]. The French grand came from Latin grandis ‘big, great, full-grown’, so we would expect to find similar forms in other Romance languages. In Spanish it appears as grande (with the final ‘e’ pronounced), and this is the source of grandee [L16th] originally used for a Spanish or Portuguese high-ranking noble, but by the 1600s applied more generally to an eminent or influential person.