Marble

How to spell marble

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce marble

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does marble mean?

1. nounA hard crystalline rock, often white or veined, that takes a high polish and is used for sculpture and building.
2. nounA small hard ball, usually of coloured glass, used in children's games.
3. verbTo give a streaked or mottled pattern resembling the veins of marble.

Marble in a sentence

• noun

  The hotel lobby had a floor of polished marble.

• noun

  The child rolled a glass marble across the kitchen floor.

• verb

  Bakers like to marble the batter so the cake shows light and dark swirls.

• noun

  The sculptor carved the figure from a single block of marble.

• noun

  One stray marble had slipped under the sofa.

• verb

  Craftspeople can marble paper by floating inks on water.

Where does marble come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the ancient Greek marmaros, which originally meant a shining or sparkling stone, related to the verb marmairein, meaning 'to gleam' or 'to glisten'. The Romans borrowed it as marmor, the everyday Latin word for the polished crystalline rock so prized for sculpture and building. From there it passed into Old French as marbre, and English took it on during the 1100s and 1200s. Along the way the second 'r' in marbre dissimilated into an 'l', giving the English 'marble', a small sound shift that explains why the word looks so different from its Latin relative marmoreal, meaning 'made of marble'. The same gleaming origin survives in the modern sense of the little glass spheres children play with, which catch and reflect light much as polished stone does.

How the word is built

• marbr- (from Latin marmor: shining stone)
• -le (English form of the older -re ending)