Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
browse, graze (nn., vv.)
To browse is literally “to eat leaves and twigs and such during much of the day,” as giraffes do, and a browse is what that food consists of. To graze is literally “to eat grass and weeds,” as cattle and horses do during much of the day, and one meaning of the noun is what that food consists of. But the figurative senses of the two verbs are also interesting: to browse is also “to read here and there in a book or to pull books at random off shelves and dip into them here and there.” Grazing, figuratively, is applied to people who snack through the day, sampling foods at random exactly as the browser samples books. Grazing in this sense may still be Informal and Conversational, but all the other senses of browse and graze are Standard.
