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: pes-tle. The stress falls on "pes".

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.