Grenade

How to spell grenade

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce grenade

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does grenade mean?

1. nounA small hand-thrown or launched explosive device that bursts into fragments.

Grenade in a sentence

• The soldier pulled the pin and threw the grenade over the wall.

• Police recovered a live grenade from the abandoned warehouse.

Where does grenade come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the French grenade, the name for the small explosive shell, which was borrowed in turn from the Spanish granada, meaning 'pomegranate'. That Spanish word traces back to the Latin granatum, short for pomum granatum, literally 'fruit full of seeds', from granum, meaning 'seed' or 'grain'. Soldiers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave the weapon this name because an early grenade, a metal ball packed with powder that burst into many fragments, resembled a pomegranate crammed with seeds. English adopted the military sense in the late 1500s, and the same granum root sits inside 'grain', 'granule', and even the Spanish city Granada. Remembering that the first syllable echoes 'grain' helps fix the spelling: it begins gren-, not gran-.

How the word is built

• gren- (from Latin granum: seed, grain)
• -ade (noun suffix denoting an action or product)