Marbles

How to spell marbles

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce marbles

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does marbles mean?

1. nounSmall hard balls, usually of coloured glass, used in a children's flicking game.
2. nounA person's mental faculties or sanity, used informally and usually with the idea of losing them.

Marbles in a sentence

• The children rolled their glass marbles across the playground.

• After three sleepless nights with the newborn, she felt she was losing her marbles.

• He kept a jar of antique marbles on the shelf above his desk.

• By the end of the chaotic project, half the team had clearly lost their marbles.

Where does marbles come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the ancient Greek marmaros, which named a hard, crystalline, shining stone and was probably linked to marmairein, a verb meaning 'to gleam' or 'to flash'. The Romans adopted it as marmor, the polished building stone we still quarry today, and from there it passed into Old French as marbre. English borrowed it during the medieval period, and an oddity of pronunciation turned that second r into an l, giving us 'marble'. The small playing pieces took the name because the earliest ones were carved from actual marble or similar stone, long before glass versions became common. The familiar plural 'marbles' covers both the toy spheres of the children's game and, by a much later figurative leap, a person's wits or sanity, as in the idea of having lost one's marbles.

How the word is built

• marble (from Greek marmaros: a shining stone)
• -s (plural)