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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

gristle.

Cartilage; now especially: cartilage present, as a tough substance, in meat.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɡɹɪsəl/
  1. Cartilage; now especially: cartilage present, as a tough substance, in meat.

    countable · uncountable
  2. Bone not yet hardened by age and hard work.

    countable · figuratively · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English gristel, grystyl, from Old English gristel (“gristle, cartilage”), Proto-West Germanic *gristl, of obscure origin; possibly from a pre-Germanic substrate language. Seemingly equivalent to a diminutive of Old English grist (“a grinding”), equivalent to modern English grist + -le; possibly related to Proto-Germanic *gredaną (“to crunch”). Cognate with Old Frisian gristel, gerstel (“gristle, cartilage”), Middle Low German gristel (“gristle”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.