crystal

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
12
Words With Friends
13
Letters
7
Pronunciation
/ˈkɹɪstəl/

Definition of crystal

16 senses · 3 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. (countable)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.
See all 16 definitions

noun

  1. (countable)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.
  2. (countable)A piece of glimmering, shining mineral resembling ice or glass.
  3. (uncountable)A fine type of glassware, or the material used to make it.
  4. (slang, uncountable)Crystal meth; methamphetamine hydrochloride.
    “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.”
  5. (countable, figuratively, obsolete, plural-normally, uncountable)A person's eye.
    “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”
  6. (countable, uncountable)The glass over the dial of a watch case.

adj

  1. (literally, not-comparable)Made of crystal.
    “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.”
  2. (figuratively, not-comparable)Very clear; coherent.
    “"Do I make myself clear?" / "Crystal."”
    “[…] the more faire and chriſtall is the skie, The vglier ſeeme the cloudes that in it flye: […]”

name

  1. A female given name from English.
    “"Crystal's pretty. The name, I mean." Jewel shook her head. "It doesn't look like her. She looks like Beaver Cleaver." […] Crys chuckled. For the first time since she'd planted herself fiercely on Lusa's driveway that morning she sounded clear and transparent, like a child. Like the crystal she was.”
    “"No prob. I'm wired, anyway...Christa or Crystal. Why'd Kayla peg her for a stripper?" "Because Gavin said she was a dancer," I said. "Well," he said, "name a girl Crystal and what's more likely? That she'll get a Ph.D. in biomechanics, or end up shaking her tail for tips?"”
    “Crystal just stood there with a semisad look on her face.”
    “CBS, the BBC's US news partner, said that VOA employees were notified in an email by Crystal Thomas, the USAGM human resources director.”
  2. A surname.
    “In this exhilarating and often hilarious book, David Crystal examines why we devote so much time and energy to language games, how professionals make a career of them, and how young children instinctively take to them.”
  3. A ghost town in Gunnison County, Colorado.
  4. A town in Maine.
  5. A city in Minnesota.
  6. A census-designated place in New Mexico.
  7. A city and town in North Dakota.
  8. A town in Wisconsin.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

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”).

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