| / English Dictionary |
GRANITE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Something having the quality of granite (unyielding firmness)
Example:
a man of granite
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
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)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Plutonic igneous rock having visibly crystalline texture; generally composed of feldspar and mica and quartz
Classified under:
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)
Context examples:
The harbour lies below me, with, on the far side, one long granite wall stretching out into the sea, with a curve outwards at the end of it, in the middle of which is a lighthouse.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
South America is, as you may have heard, a granite continent.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
One such large granite body, the 2.62 billion-year-old Wyoming batholith, extends more than 125 miles across central Wyoming.
(Supervolcanoes like Yellowstone may have been more active in the past, NSF)
For example, microbes that flourish on granite gravestones in Maine are more like those growing on granite gravestones in Belgium than they are to those on limestone tombstones just feet away.
(Tales from the crypt: Life after death in a graveyard, National Science Foundation)
South of the Adour the jagged line of mountains which fringe the sky-line send out long granite claws, running down into the lowlands and dividing them into “gaves” or stretches of valley.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
If that’s all your grief, said the huntsman, I’ll take you there with all my heart; so he drew her under his cloak, and the moment he wished to be on the granite mountain they were both there.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
Yet even without knowing his brilliant record one could not fail to be impressed by a mere glance at the man, the square, massive face, the brooding eyes under the thatched brows, and the granite moulding of the inflexible jaw.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
They were all on the one stratum, hollowed out of some soft rock which lay between the volcanic basalt forming the ruddy cliffs above them, and the hard granite which formed their base.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
A new study by University of Wyoming researchers suggests scientists can go back to the past to study present-day solidified magma chambers where the erosion has removed overlying rock, exposing granite underpinnings.
(Supervolcanoes like Yellowstone may have been more active in the past, NSF)
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