Concrete

How to spell concrete

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce concrete

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does concrete mean?

1. nounA hard building material made by mixing cement, sand, gravel, and water that sets solid.
2. adjectiveDefinite and specific, relating to real things rather than abstract ideas.
3. verbTo cover or surface something with the building material concrete.

Concrete in a sentence

• noun

  The builders poured fresh concrete for the new driveway.

• adjective

  The committee wanted concrete evidence before approving the budget.

• verb

  They decided to concrete the back yard for easier upkeep.

• noun

  The car park is a vast slab of grey concrete.

• adjective

  She offered a concrete plan instead of vague promises.

• verb

  The council plans to concrete the muddy footpath next month.

Where does concrete come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Concrete arrived in English in the late 1300s from the Latin concretus, the past participle of concrescere, a verb meaning 'to grow together' or 'to harden'. That verb was formed from con-, meaning 'together', and crescere, meaning 'to grow', which is the same root that gives us 'crescent' and 'increase'. The earliest English use was philosophical and grammatical: a 'concrete' term named a real, particular thing rather than an abstract quality, the opposite of 'abstract'. From this idea of something solid and tangible came the modern adjective sense of 'definite and specific'. The building material took its name in the early 1800s because the mix of cement, sand, and stone literally grows together into a hard mass, exactly what the Latin root describes.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• cret (from crescere/cretus: to grow)
• -e