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Gristle
Definitions
- 1 Cartilage; now especially: cartilage present, as a tough substance, in meat. countable, uncountable
"When you're chewing on life's gristle Don't grumble, give a whistle And this'll help things turn out for the best[…]"
- 2 tough elastic tissue; mostly converted to bone in adults wordnet
- 3 Bone not yet hardened by age and hard work. countable, figuratively, uncountable
"And it is a hard and cruel thing thus in early youth to taste beforehand the pangs which should be reserved for the stout time of manhood, when the gristle has become bone, and we stand up and fight out our lives, as a thing tried before and foreseen; for then we are veterans used to sieges and battles, and not green recruits, recoiling at the first shock of the encounter."
Etymology
From Middle English gristel, grystyl, from Old English gristel (“gristle, cartilage”), Proto-West Germanic *gristl, of obscure origin; possibly from a pre-Germanic substrate language. Seemingly equivalent to a diminutive of Old English grist (“a grinding”), equivalent to modern English grist + -le; possibly related to Proto-Germanic *gredaną (“to crunch”). Cognate with Old Frisian gristel, gerstel (“gristle, cartilage”), Middle Low German gristel (“gristle”).
See also for "gristle"
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