Word.ws English Dictionary

grit

/ɡɹɪt/

grit noun: a collection of hard small materials, such as dirt, ground stone, debris from sandblasting or other such grinding, or swarf from metalworking.

grit: a collection of hard small materials, such as dirt, ground stone, debris from sandblasting or other...
Image: Dave.Dunford, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

grit (uncountable)

  1. 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.
    1. Sand or a sand–salt mixture spread on wet and, especially, icy roads and footpaths to improve traction.
  2. Small, hard, inedible particles in food.
    • These cookies seem to have grit from nutshells in them.
  3. 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.
  4. A hard, coarse-grained siliceous sandstone; gritstone. Also, a finer sharp-grained sandstone, e.g., grindstone grit.
  5. (idiomatic) Strength of mind; courage or fearlessness; fortitude.
    • That kid with the cast on his arm has the grit to play dodgeball.
    • They came to a rising ground , not sharp , but long ; and here youth and grit and sober living told more than ever.1861, Charles Reade, The Cloister and the Hearth; or, Maid, Wife, and Widow. A Matter-of-Fact Romance., New York, N.Y.: Rudd & Carleton; London: Trübner & Co.

Verb

grit (third-person singular simple present grits, present participle gritting, simple past and past participle gritted or (nonstandard) grit)

  1. (ergative, transitive) 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.
  2. To cover with grit.
  3. (intransitive, obsolete) To give forth a grating sound, like sand under the feet; to grate; to grind.
    • The sanded floor that grits beneath the tread1767, Oliver Goldsmith, An Author's Bedchamber

Noun (2)

grit (plural grits)

  1. (plural-normally) Husked but unground oats.
  2. (plural-normally) Coarsely ground corn or hominy used as porridge.
    • grits and eggs
    • ham and grits

Noun (3) capitalized: Grit

Grit (plural Grits)

  1. (Canadian) A member or supporter of the Liberal Party of Canada or one of its provincial wings (except for the Quebec provincial wing).

Adjective capitalized: Grit

Grit (not comparable)

  1. (Canadian) Of or belonging to the Liberal Party of Canada.

grit meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

grit in Hindi

grit, sand, grittiness
किरकिरी kirkirī

grit in Tamil

மணல், மனஉறுதி, மனந்தளராமை

grit in Urdu

کنکری, کردار کی پختگی, سنگ ریزہ

grit in Bengali

ধৈর্য ও সাহস, বালুকণা, ক্ষুদ্র পাথরের কণা
More languagesFewer languages
grit in Telugu
నూక nūka
grit in Malayalam
ചരൽ, കടുപ്പമുള്ള തരി, കൽമണൽ, നിശ്ചയദാർഢ്യം
grit in Kannada
ಧೈರ್ಯ, ಸ್ಥೈರ್ಯ, ದಿಟ್ಟತನ, ಛಾತಿ
grit in Punjabi
ਕਿਰਕ kirak, ਧੂੜ dhūṛ, دھوڑ dhūṛ
grit in Odia
ଗ୍ରିଟ୍, ଗ୍ରିଟ୍ |
grit in Sinhala
කප්පි kappi
grit in Nepali
ग्रिट, ग्रिट गर्न

Examples of grit in a sentence

  • My teeth gritted as I heard the news.
  • If you are overcome by a man of grit, he insolently makes you conscious of your own weakness1880, Edwin Percy Whipple, Success and Its Conditions:
  • Although working under very unpleasant conditions they never grumbled, and to the end showed continuous grit; and in addition to this several examples of sheer heroism were displayed.1941 April, “Notes and News: Railwaymen and Snow”, in Railway Magazine, page 178:
  • But what their admirers call grit and critics deem shamelessness can overshadow another essential element of the Clinton school: a willingness to put on the hair shirt of humility to regain power.2015 April 15, Jonathan Martin, “For a Clinton, it’s not hard to be humble in an effort to regain power”, in The New York Times, archived...

All 37 example sentences with grit

Forms of grit

Verb
third-person singular presentgrits
present participlegritting
past participlegritted
pastgritted
past participle (nonstandard)grit
past (nonstandard)grit
Noun
pluralgrits
pluralGrits

Plural of grit: grits

Origin of grit

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.

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.

After the Clear Grits, 19th-century reformers so named because they wanted members who were "all sand and no dirt, clear grit all the way through".

Words formed from grit

Phrases with grit

Words that rhyme with grit

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about grit

What does grit mean?
Grit means a collection of hard small materials, such as dirt, ground stone, debris from sandblasting or other such grinding, or swarf from metalworking.
What is grit in Hindi?
Grit in Hindi is किरकिरी (kirkirī). See Grit meaning in Hindi.
How do you use grit in a sentence?
My teeth gritted as I heard the news.
What part of speech is grit?
Grit can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce grit?
Grit is pronounced /ɡɹɪt/.
What is the plural of grit?
The plural of grit is grits.

Words near grit in the dictionary

  1. Griswold
  2. Griswolds
  3. Griswoldville
  4. Griswood
  5. grisy
  6. grit
  7. grit cell
  8. grit cells
  9. Grit City
  10. grit one's teeth
  11. gritch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grit (page history and authors); Grit (page history and authors); किरकिरी (Hindi) (page history and authors); grit (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); grit (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Grit (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); నూక (Telugu) (page history and authors); grit (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); grit (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); دھوڑ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); grit (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); කප්පි (Sinhala) (page history and authors); grit (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-grit.ogg, En-us-grit.oga.

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