GRANITE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does granite mean? 

• GRANITE (noun)
  The noun GRANITE has 2 senses:

1. plutonic igneous rock having visibly crystalline texture; generally composed of feldspar and mica and quartz

2. something having the quality of granite (unyielding firmness)

  Familiarity information: GRANITE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• GRANITE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Plutonic igneous rock having visibly crystalline texture; generally composed of feldspar and mica and quartz

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Hypernyms ("granite" is a kind of...):

batholite; batholith; pluton; plutonic rock (large mass of intrusive igneous rock believed to have solidified deep within the earth)

Meronyms (substance of "granite"):

atomic number 14; Si; silicon (a tetravalent nonmetallic element; next to oxygen it is the most abundant element in the earth's crust; occurs in clay and feldspar and granite and quartz and sand; used as a semiconductor in transistors)

Derivation:

granitic (hard as granite)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Something having the quality of granite (unyielding firmness)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Context example:

a man of granite

Hypernyms ("granite" is a kind of...):

firmness; steadiness (the quality of being steady or securely and immovably fixed in place)

Derivation:

granitic (showing unfeeling resistance to tender feelings)

 Context examples 

Roxton came back to us with a face of granite.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In contrast to the surfaces of granite gravestones, those of limestone tombstones are less acidic.

(Tales from the crypt: Life after death in a graveyard, National Science Foundation)

They might have been granite for all the light and warmth of a human soul they contained.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The reason may relate to higher radioactive heat production in the past, which provided power to drive extensive granite formation.

(Supervolcanoes like Yellowstone may have been more active in the past, NSF)

To the south of Pampeluna in the kingdom of Navarre there stretched a high table-land, rising into bare, sterile hills, brown or gray in color, and strewn with huge boulders of granite.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and passing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of close-ranked trees.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Trees growing atop granite in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains rely on nutrients from windborne dust more than on nutrients from the underlying bedrock.

(Study reveals surprising role of dust in mountain ecosystems, National Science Foundation)

Holmes disregarded the outstretched hand and looked at him with a face of granite.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Alas! dear sir, said she, yonder lies the granite rock where all the costly diamonds grow, and I want so much to go there, that whenever I think of it I cannot help being sorrowful, for who can reach it? only the birds and the flies—man cannot.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

I had a good mind to ask an old man, in wire spectacles, who was breaking stones upon the road, to lend me his hammer for a little while, and let me begin to beat a path to Dora out of granite.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)