Chalk

How to spell chalk

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce chalk

What does chalk mean?

1. nounA soft white or coloured stick of limestone, or the rock itself, used for writing, drawing, or marking surfaces.
2. verbTo mark, draw, or write on a surface using chalk.

Chalk in a sentence

• noun

  The teacher wrote the date on the board with a piece of chalk.

• verb

  The builders will chalk a guideline on the floor before laying the tiles.

• noun

  The cliffs along that coast are made of soft white chalk.

• verb

  Officials chalk the car tyres to check how long it has been parked.

Where does chalk come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Chalk comes from the Old English word cealc, which described lime and the soft white limestone used for building and marking. The Old English form was itself an early borrowing from the Latin calx, meaning 'lime' or 'limestone', a word that also gave us 'calcium', 'calculate', and 'calcium carbonate', the very mineral that chalk is made of. The Latin calx in turn is thought to derive from a Greek word for a small pebble or stone. The connection to 'calculate' is a pleasing one: Roman accountants counted with little limestone pebbles, so the same root that names the dusty stick at the whiteboard also underlies the maths we do. The spelling kept the Germanic 'ch' and the 'l' even though many speakers now barely sound the 'l', which is the small trap for writers who hear /chawk/ and want to leave the letter out.

How the word is built

• chalk (from Old English cealc, ultimately Latin calx 'lime, limestone'); single root, no affixes