Granite

How to spell granite

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce granite

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does granite mean?

1. nounA very hard, coarse-grained igneous rock used for building and worktops.

Granite in a sentence

• The kitchen has a polished granite worktop that resists heat and scratches.

• The old bank was faced with grey granite to project a sense of permanence.

Where does granite come from?

Language of origin: Italian

Granite comes from the Italian word granito, meaning 'grained' or 'grainy', which described the speckled, grain-like crystals visible across the surface of the stone. That Italian word was built on grano, 'grain', which descends directly from the Latin granum, the ordinary word for a seed or grain of cereal. English borrowed granite in the early 1600s, at a time when Italian stonework and architecture were widely admired, so the imported name travelled with the imported taste for the material. The very same Latin granum sits behind everyday English words such as 'grain', 'granary' and 'granule', which is a useful reminder that the speckled look of the rock is the whole point of its name. The spelling trap is the quiet, unstressed ending: the final syllable sounds like a weak 'it', so writers must remember it is spelled '-ite', the standard ending English uses for rock and mineral names.

How the word is built

• gran- (from grano/granum: grain)
• -ite (suffix for rocks and minerals)