crystal
/ˈkɹɪstəl/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.40 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A solid composed of an array of atoms or molecules possessing long-range order and arranged in a pattern which is periodic in three dimensions.
Countable
adj
Made of crystal.
Example Sentences
- "He tells me he's been shooting crystal, which I already pretty much know because he does not bother to keep his sleeves rolled down over the needle tracks."
- "Come, let's away. My loue, giue me thy Lippes: Looke to my Chattels, and my Moueables: [...] Goe, cleare they Chryſtalls. Yokefellowes in Armes, let vs to France"
- "Its ceiling was crystal, around on the wall / Thickly studded were rubies and diamonds rare; / But purer than crystal, and brighter than all / Of the jewels adorning her glittering hall, / Was the mermaiden languishing there."
- "The walls were crystal, and they seemed to have hundreds of different-colored lights shifting behind them."
- "The uneven floor was crystal as well, as if there once had been huge crystals jutting up here, too, but ones that had been broken away and the surface crudely adzed."
- ""Do I make myself clear?" / "Crystal.""
Etymology
From Middle English crystal, cristal, criȝstall, representing a merger of Old English cristalla (from Latin crystallus) and Anglo-Norman cristall, Old French cristal (from Latin crystallum). The Latin is derived from Ancient Greek κρύσταλλος (krústallos, “clear ice”), from κρύος (krúos, “frost”), from Proto-Indo-European *krews- (“hard, hard outer surface, crust”).