pestle

1. 1.

   grind, mash or pulverize in a mortar

   “pestle the garlic”

   Broadergrind

Other forms of pestle

plural

pestles·

past tense

pestled·

present participle

pestling·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about pestle

What does pestle mean?

pestle means "machine consisting of a heavy bar that moves vertically for pounding or crushing ores". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in pestle?

pestle has 2 syllables and divides as pes-tle under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for pestle?

Close synonyms include stamp, muller, pounder. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is pestle a common word?

pestle is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.