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marble

noun · adjective · verb

Simple meaning

A hard crystalline metamorphic rock that takes a high polish.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

mahrbuhl

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈmɑɹbəl

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A hard crystalline metamorphic rock that takes a high polish; used for sculpture and as building material

  2. uncountablepetrology

    A metamorphic rock of crystalline limestone.

  3. in the pluralarchaeology

    Statues made from marble.

  4. countablegames

    A small ball used in games, originally of marble but now usually of glass or ceramic.

  5. A sculpture carved from marble

  6. The marbling in meat.

adjective

  1. figurative

    Cold; hard; unfeeling.

  2. Made of, or resembling, marble.

verb

  1. transitive

    To cause (something to have) the streaked or swirled appearance of certain types of marble, for example by mixing viscous ingredients incompletely, or by applying paint or other colorants unevenly.

  2. transitive

    To cause meat, usually beef, pork, or lamb, to be interlaced with fat so that its appearance resembles that of marble.

  3. by extensionfigurative

    To lace or be laced throughout.

  4. Paint or stain like marble

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
General and technical use

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A hard crystalline metamorphic rock that takes a high polish; used for sculpture and as building material

Used this way, marble is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use marble

  • “The sculptor worked with a large block of white marble.”

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

marble archblack marblemarble floormarble statuemarble stepsmarble slablike marblemarble faun

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • marblesnounPlural form

    A children's game played with little balls made of a hard substance (as glass).

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • marble-woodnounCompound term

    Hard marbled wood.

  • marble cakenounCompound term

    Made of light and dark batter very lightly blended.

  • marble bones diseasenounCompound term

    An inherited disorder characterized by an increase in bone density.

  • andaman marblenounCompound term

    Large Asiatic tree having hard marbled zebrawood.

  • onyx marblenounCompound term

    A hard compact kind of calcite.

  • elgin marblesnounCompound term

    A collection of classical Greek marble sculptures and fragments of architecture created by Phidias.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.