Ingrained

How to spell ingrained

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ingrained

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ingrained mean?

1. adjectiveFirmly fixed or established, especially a habit, belief, or feeling that is hard to change.

Ingrained in a sentence

• His ingrained habit of checking the locks twice was hard to break.

• The company has an ingrained culture of working late into the evening.

Where does ingrained come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grew out of the old dyeing trade, where to dye something 'in grain' meant to colour it with a fast, fixed dye made from a tiny scale insect once thought to be a seed or grain. The 'grain' here traces back to the Latin granum, meaning 'seed' or 'small grain', which also gave us the red dye 'grana' (kermes and cochineal) used to make the most permanent reds. Because cloth dyed in grain held its colour through every wash, English speakers from the 1300s onward used 'engrained' or 'ingrained' to mean thoroughly and permanently coloured. By the 1700s the figurative sense had taken over completely, so that an ingrained habit or attitude is one fixed so deep it cannot be washed out. The spelling keeps the whole ordinary word 'grain' visible inside it, which is the easiest way to remember that it is in-grain-ed and not 'engrained' with an e.

How the word is built

• in- (into)
• grain (the dye called grain, from Latin granum: seed, grain)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)