English Explanatory Dictionary

grit

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A collection of hard small materials, such as dirt, ground stone, debris from sandblasting or other such grinding, or swarf from metalworking.
  2. Sand or a sand–salt mixture spread on wet and, especially, icy roads and footpaths to improve traction.
  3. Small, hard, inedible particles in food.
  4. A measure of the size of abrasive grains, such as those on sandpaper, and thus their relative coarseness or fineness; the smaller the number, the coarser the abrasive: thus, 60 is rough, 600 is fine, and 3000 is ultrafine.
  5. A hard, coarse-grained siliceous sandstone; gritstone. Also, a finer sharp-grained sandstone, e.g., grindstone grit.
  6. Strength of mind; courage or fearlessness; fortitude.
verb
  1. To clench (one's teeth), particularly in reaction to pain or anger.
  2. To cover with grit.
  3. To give forth a grating sound, like sand under the feet; to grate; to grind.
noun
  1. Husked but unground oats.
  2. Coarsely ground corn or hominy used as porridge.
noun
  1. A member or supporter of the Liberal Party of Canada or one of its provincial wings (except for the Quebec provincial wing).
adj
  1. Of or belonging to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Pronunciation

/ɡɹɪt/ en-au-grit.ogg En-us-grit.oga

Word forms

grit grits gritting gritted

Etymology

With early modern vowel shortening, from Middle English grete, griet, from Old English grēot, from Proto-West Germanic *greut, from Proto-Germanic *greutą. Compare grist.

Related words

grind grindstone sand sandy sandblasting debris mortar and pestle swarf groat grout gruel Liberal Grits Liberal Party Whig Tory

Derived words

grit cell gritless gritrock gritsome gritten gritter grittish gritty millstone grit peagrit road grit true grit Yorkshire grit grit one's teeth

Translations

Catalan: grava Catalan: llimadures Catalan: pòlvores Czech: drť Czech: písek Czech: štěrk Dutch: gruis Finnish: puru Finnish: pöly Finnish: kivipöly Finnish: metallipuru French: gravillon German: Splitt German: Schotter German: Streu German: Grieß German: Streumittel German: Streugut German: Schrot Hungarian: kavics Hungarian: murva Hungarian: homok Hungarian: homokkő Hungarian: kőpor Hungarian: törmelék Hungarian: zúzalék Italian: sabbia Māori: kirikiri Polish: piasek Polish: żwir Portuguese: granalha Russian: песо́к Serbo-Croatian: pijesak Serbo-Croatian: pesak Serbo-Croatian: zrnca Spanish: arenilla
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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