Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell gristle

hear itgris·tle/'grɪsəl/nounSilent and tricky

What it means: Tough cartilage or tissue found in meat.

In a sentence: I found a tiny piece of gristle in my chicken nugget.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as grissle or grissel.

Same family: cartilage, tendon, bone, fat, meat. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Gristle” comes from Old English “gristel,” meaning cartilage or gristle, and is related to words for rough or coarse textures. It has kept almost the same meaning for over a thousand years, always referring to the tough parts of meat or tissue.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

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