Emery

How to spell emery

5 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce emery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emery mean?

1. nounA hard, dark granular mineral used as an abrasive for grinding, smoothing and polishing surfaces.

Emery in a sentence

• She smoothed the rough edge of her nail with an emery board.

• The mechanic cleaned the rusted bolt with a strip of emery cloth.

Where does emery come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Emery is the dark, granular form of the mineral corundum, prized for centuries because it is hard enough to grind and polish metal, glass and stone. The English word arrived in the early 1500s from the French émeri, which in turn came from the Italian smeriglio, all tracing back to the Greek smiris (also spelled smyris), meaning an abrasive or polishing powder. The Greeks quarried the best emery on the island of Naxos, and the substance kept its grinding role right through to the modern emery board used on fingernails and the emery cloth on a workbench. The spelling trap is that the word sounds like the personal name Emory and like the start of 'memory', tempting writers toward an extra letter; in fact it is simply e-m-e-r-y, three syllables built on that single Greek root. Because it is a mineral name rather than a compound, there is no helpful prefix or suffix to lean on, so it is best fixed in memory by its link to the abrasive 'smiris' of ancient Naxos.

How the word is built

• emery (a single root borrowed whole; from Greek smiris, a polishing powder), with no separable prefix or suffix