Grease

How to spell grease

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce grease

What does grease mean?

1. nounA thick, oily substance, especially melted animal fat or a lubricant used on machinery.
2. verbTo smear or coat something with a fatty or oily substance.

Grease in a sentence

• noun

  The mechanic wiped a layer of grease from the bearing.

• verb

  Remember to grease the cake tin before pouring in the batter.

• noun

  Bacon left a film of grease on the frying pan.

• verb

  Workers grease the rails to keep the carriages rolling smoothly.

Where does grease come from?

Language of origin: French

Grease entered English in the 1200s from Old French gresse or craisse, meaning the melted fat of an animal. That French word descended from the Latin adjective crassus, which literally meant 'thick', 'dense' or 'fat', the same root that gives us 'crass'. Over time the English noun came to cover any soft, oily or fatty substance, and by the 1300s it was being used for the kind of lubricant smeared on axles and machinery. The verb sense, meaning to smear or oil something, followed naturally from the noun. The spelling trap lies in the quiet '-ea-' vowel and the final '-se', plus the fact that it sounds exactly like the country Greece.

How the word is built

• grease (single root from Latin crassus: thick, fat; no prefix or suffix)