grit.
A collection of hard small materials, such as dirt, ground stone, debris from sandblasting or other such grinding, or swarf from metalworking.
Meaning & usage
A collection of hard small materials, such as dirt, ground stone, debris from sandblasting or other such grinding, or swarf from metalworking.
The flower beds were white with grit from sand blasting the flagstone walkways.
A collection of hard small materials, such as dirt, ground stone, debris from sandblasting or other such grinding, or swarf from metalworking. Sand or a sand–salt mixture spread on wet and, especially, icy roads and footpaths to improve traction.
Small, hard, inedible particles in food.
These cookies seem to have grit from nutshells in them.
A measure of the size of abrasive grains, such as those on sandpaper, and thus their relative coarseness or fineness; the smaller the number, the coarser the abrasive: thus, 60 is rough, 600 is fine, and 3000 is ultrafine.
I need a sheet of 100 grit sandpaper.
A hard, coarse-grained siliceous sandstone; gritstone. Also, a finer sharp-grained sandstone, e.g., grindstone grit.
Strength of mind; courage or fearlessness; fortitude.
That kid with the cast on his arm has the grit to play dodgeball.
Where this word comes from
With early modern vowel shortening, from Middle English grete, griet, from Old English grēot, from Proto-West Germanic *greut, from Proto-Germanic *greutą. Compare grist.
To clench (one's teeth), particularly in reaction to pain or anger.
We had no choice but to grit our teeth and get on with it.
He has a sleeping disorder and grits his teeth.
To cover with grit.
To give forth a grating sound, like sand under the feet; to grate; to grind.
Where this word comes from
With early modern vowel shortening, from Middle English grete, griet, from Old English grēot, from Proto-West Germanic *greut, from Proto-Germanic *greutą. Compare grist.
Husked but unground oats.
Coarsely ground corn or hominy used as porridge.
grits and eggs
ham and grits
Where this word comes from
From Middle English *gryt (“bran, chaff”), from Old English grytt, from Proto-West Germanic *gruti (“coarsely ground bits”), ablaut variant of Proto-Indo-European *gʰrewd-. See above. Doublet of goetta.
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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.