What is grate |grating |grateing|gratting? Quietly serving its duty obscurely for a drain cover (that's exactly what gratings are) which enables us to walk on it to have fun with the walking space it enables while protecting us from falling into drains is what is not popularly known as grate. Throughout the last 2 decades in the industry, common terms used for drain covers are "grate", "grating" and even "grateing".