Carat

How to spell carat

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce carat

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does carat mean?

1. nounA unit of weight for gemstones, equal to 200 milligrams.
2. nounA measure of the purity of gold, where pure gold is twenty-four parts.

Carat in a sentence

• The jeweller weighed the diamond and recorded it at just over one carat.

• The wedding band was stamped to show its nine carat gold content.

• A heavier stone of the same quality commands a higher price per carat.

• Pure bullion is rated at twenty-four carat, the highest possible.

Where does carat come from?

Language of origin: Arabic

Carat traces back to the Greek keration, a word that literally meant 'little horn' and was used for the seed of the carob tree, whose pods curl like small horns. Because carob seeds were once thought to be remarkably uniform in weight, traders across the ancient Mediterranean used them as tiny counterweights on their scales for precious goods. The Greek term passed into Arabic as qirat, a recognised small unit of weight, and from there into medieval Italian as carato and Old French as carat before reaching English in the late fifteenth century. Over time the word settled into two related jobs: measuring the mass of gemstones and grading the purity of gold. The seed origin is a useful memory hook, since the soft single 'r' and the '-at' ending echo the foreign root rather than the English vegetable 'carrot'.

How the word is built

• Single root, no affixes: carat (from Arabic qirat 'small weight', ultimately Greek keration 'carob seed').

Words that sound like carat

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• carrot: A long, tapering orange root vegetable eaten cooked or raw.