Finegrained

Finegrained, commonly written as fine-grained or with a hyphen, is a descriptive term used across disciplines to denote a high level of detail or small constituent elements. It contrasts with coarse-grained, which implies larger units or lower resolution. The concept applies to materials, data, analyses, and classifications.

In materials science, a fine-grained microstructure refers to small crystalline grains in metals or ceramics. Such grains can be produced by rapid cooling or specific heat treatments. Fine grains often strengthen materials through grain-boundary strengthening, but may affect toughness and ductility. The relationship between grain size and strength is summarized by the Hall–Petch principle.

In computing and information systems, fine-grained describes high granularity. Fine-grained locking and permissions restrict access to small, specific data elements rather than broad regions, improving parallelism but increasing management overhead. In machine learning, fine-grained classification targets detailed subcategories within a domain (for example, bird species or car models) rather than coarse categories like "bird" or "car".

In geography, ecology, and related fields, fine-grained analysis examines high-resolution patterns such as microhabitats or short-range land-use changes, whereas coarse-grained studies aggregate over larger areas. In linguistics and anthropology, fine-grained distinctions capture subtle variations that broader categories miss.

Note on usage: Finegrained can be hyphenated, written as two words, or used as a proper noun in branding. Style guides vary; the most important point is consistency within a text.