Boulder
nounA large rounded rock, especially one shaped and moved by water, ice, or weathering.
How to spell boulder
7 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce boulder
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does boulder mean?
- nounA large rounded rock, especially one shaped and moved by water, ice, or weathering.
Boulder in a sentence
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A massive boulder blocked the mountain road after the storm.
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The climbers rested in the shade of a granite boulder.
Where does boulder come from?
Language of origin: Old Norse
Boulder entered English in the medieval period from a Scandinavian source, and its older spellings include 'bulder' and 'bowlder'. The likeliest ancestor is a word preserved in Swedish dialect as 'bullersten', which combines 'buller', meaning a rumbling or roaring noise, with 'sten', meaning stone; the idea is the loud clattering a big rock makes as it is rolled along by a river. So the name originally evoked the sound of the stone rather than just its size. Over time English narrowed the meaning to any large, rounded rock, especially one worn smooth and carried by water or ice. The tricky 'ou' spelling, pronounced like 'oh', is what makes it sound exactly like 'bolder', the comparative of 'bold', and that is the main spelling trap to watch.
How the word is built
- boulder (a single root from Scandinavian bullersten, a noisy stone in a stream); not built from a prefix or suffix
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