Quartz

How to spell quartz

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce quartz

What does quartz mean?

1. nounA hard, crystalline mineral made of silica, common in rocks and used in watches, electronics, and jewellery.

Quartz in a sentence

• The new kitchen worktop is made of polished quartz.

• A tiny sliver of quartz keeps the watch running accurately.

Where does quartz come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Quartz came into English in the early 1700s from the German word Quarz, a term used by miners in the ore districts of central Europe. The German word itself is of uncertain and much debated origin; the most popular suggestion is that it descends from a West Slavic source related to the word twardy or kwardy, meaning 'hard', which would suit a stubbornly hard rock-forming mineral. English borrowed the word almost unchanged as scientists and geologists adopted German mining vocabulary wholesale. The unusual 'qu' followed by a final 'tz' is exactly what marks it as a German import rather than a native English word, and that foreign-looking 'tz' spelling is the part most likely to trip a writer up. Today quartz names one of the most common minerals on Earth and lends its name to the accurate timekeeping crystals in modern watches.

How the word is built

• quartz (single root, no prefix or suffix; a loanword kept whole)