Crystal

How to spell crystal

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce crystal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does crystal mean?

1. nounA clear, hard mineral or piece of fine glass, or a solid whose atoms form a regular repeating structure.
2. adjectivePerfectly clear and transparent, like fine glass.

Crystal in a sentence

• noun

  The chandelier was made of cut crystal that scattered the light.

• adjective

  The lake was so crystal that we could see the stones on the bottom.

• noun

  Under the microscope each grain of salt looked like a tiny crystal.

• adjective

  His explanation made the instructions crystal clear to everyone.

Where does crystal come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the ancient Greek krystallos, which originally meant 'ice' and later 'clear quartz', since the Greeks believed that rock crystal was water frozen so hard that it would never melt. That noun was built on kryos, meaning 'icy cold' or 'frost', the same root that gives us modern words like cryogenic. It passed into Latin as crystallus and then into Old French as cristal, and English adopted it in the medieval period to describe transparent quartz and fine clear glass. Over time the meaning broadened to cover any solid whose atoms are arranged in a regular, repeating lattice. The 'y' in the modern spelling is a deliberate nod to the Greek upsilon in kryos, which is exactly the letter that trips up writers who expect a simple 'i'.

How the word is built

• cryst- (from Greek krystallos: ice, clear ice)
• -al (noun/adjective suffix)