grit

Meanings

Noun

• A collection of hard small materials, such as dirt, ground stone, debris from sandblasting or other such grinding, or swarf from metalworking.
• Inedible particles in food.
• A measure of the relative coarseness of an abrasive material such as sandpaper, the smaller the number the coarser the abrasive.
• A hard, coarse-grained siliceous sandstone; gritstone. Also, a finer sharp-grained sandstone, e.g., grindstone grit.
• Strength of mind; great courage or fearlessness; fortitude.
• Husked but unground oats.
• Coarsely ground corn or hominy used as porridge.

Verb

• Apparently only in grit one's teeth: to clench, particularly in reaction to pain or anger.
• To cover with grit.
• To give forth a grating sound, like sand under the feet; to grate; to grind.

Origin

• With early modern vowel shortening, from , griet, from , from (compare German Grieß, Swedish gryta, Norwegian Nynorsk grjot), from (compare Lithuanian grúodas ("frost; frozen street dirt"), Serbo-Croatian grȕda ("lump")).
• From , from , from (compare Dutch grut, German Grütze), ablaut variant of . See above.