grit
pronunciation
How to pronounce grit in British English:
UK [grɪt]
How to pronounce grit in American English:
US [ɡrɪt]
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- Noun:
- a hard coarse-grained siliceous sandstone
- fortitude and determination
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- Verb:
- cover with a grit
- clench together
Word Origin
- grit
- grit: [OE] Etymologically, grit is ‘something produced by pounding’. Prehistoric Indo- European *ghrēu- denoted ‘rub, pound, crush’, and from it came Germanic *greutam ‘tiny particles of crushed or pounded rock’, hence ‘sand, gravel’. Its modern descendants include English grit and German griess ‘gravel, grit, coarse sand’, and it was also used in the formation of the Old English word for ‘pearl’, meregrot, literally ‘sea-pebble’, an alteration of Latin margarīta ‘pearl’. Groats ‘husked grain’ [OE] comes from the same source.The sense ‘determination, resolve’ originated in the USA in the early 19th century, presumably as a metaphorical extension of grit meaning ‘hard sandstone’ (as in millstone grit).=> groats
- grit (n.)
- Old English greot "sand, dust, earth, gravel," from Proto-Germanic *greutan "tiny particles of crushed rock" (cognates: Old Saxon griot, Old Frisian gret, Old Norse grjot "rock, stone," German Grieß "grit, sand"), from PIE *ghreu- "rub, grind" (cognates: Lithuanian grudas "corn, kernel," Old Church Slavonic gruda "clod"). Sense of "pluck, spirit, firmness of mind" first recorded American English, 1808. If he hadn't a had the clear grit in him, and showed teeth and claws, they'd a nullified him so, you wouldn't have see'd a grease spot of him no more. [Thomas Chandler Haliburton, "Sam Slick in England," 1843]
- grit (v.)
- "make a grating sound," 1762, probably from grit (n.). Meaning "to grate, grind" is from 1797. Related: Gritted; gritting.
Example
- 1. Was our nation 's greatness about having god or having grit ?
- 2. Gibala last month published a new study of h. i. t.requiring only a stationary bicycle and some degree of grit .
- 3. You could indulge yourself with a snack , but you think it 's best to grit your teeth and wait for lunch .
- 4. The story of hardship and grit touches a chord with rowling , who began writing harry potter as an unemployed single mother .
- 5. Politics is , as it were , the gizzard of society , full of grit and gravel , and the two political parties are its two opposite halves , - sometimes split into quarters , it may be , which grind on each other .