gristle

/ˈɡɹɪsəl/

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

Noun

gristle (countable and uncountable, plural gristles)

Cartilage; now especially: cartilage present, as a tough substance, in meat.
- When you're chewing on life's gristle
  Don't grumble, give a whistle
  And this'll help things turn out for the best[…]1979, Monty Python, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”
- But she was tired of cell culture, tired of meticulously cutting away dead tissue like gristle from a steak […]2011, Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, New York: Broadway Books, →ISBN, page 35
(figuratively) Bone not yet hardened by age and hard work.
- And it is a hard and cruel thing thus in early youth to taste beforehand the pangs which should be reserved for the stout time of manhood, when the gristle has become bone, and we stand up and fight out our lives, as a thing tried before and foreseen; for then we are veterans used to sieges and...1849, Herman Melville, “chapter II”, in Redburn: His First Voyage. […], 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC
- Look at Adam through the rest of the day, as he stands on the scaffolding with the two-feet ruler in his hand, whistling low while he considers how a difficulty about a floor-joist or a window-frame is to be overcome; or as he pushes one of the younger workmen aside and takes his place in upheaving...1859, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “chapter XIX”, in Adam Bede […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC

gristle meaning in Urdu, Malayalam and Gujarati

gristle in Gujarati

cartilage: કાસ્થિ kāsthi, કુમળું હાડકું kumaḷũ hāḍkũ, કૂણું હાડકું kūṇũ hāḍkũ

Examples of gristle in a sentence

Thee'st got too much gristle i' thy bones yet"; or as he fixes his keen black eyes on the motions of a workman on the other side of the room and warns him that his distances are not right.1859, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “chapter XIX”, in Adam Bede […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh...
"He's more a sparrer than a fighter just at present, but when his gristle sets he'll take on anything on the list.1896, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rodney Stone, (Please provide the book title or journal name):

Forms of gristle

plural	gristles

Origin of gristle

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”).

Words formed from gristle

Words that rhyme with gristle

3 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about gristle

What does gristle mean?: Gristle means cartilage; now especially: cartilage present, as a tough substance, in meat.
What is gristle in Urdu?: Gristle in Urdu is کری. See Gristle meaning in Urdu.
How do you use gristle in a sentence?: Thee'st got too much gristle i' thy bones yet"; or as he fixes his keen black eyes on the motions of a workman on the other side of the room and warns him that his distances are not right.
What part of speech is gristle?: Gristle is a noun.
How do you pronounce gristle?: Gristle is pronounced /ˈɡɹɪsəl/.
What is the plural of gristle?: The plural of gristle is gristles.

Words near gristle in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: gristle (page history and authors); gristle (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gristle (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-gristle.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-gristle.wav.

Cite this entry: “gristle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gristle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.