Other forms: gravels
Gravel is loose small stones, the kind that crunch under your feet on a path or a driveway. Grey and brown, most of them about the size of a fingernail, kicked into the grass and raked back every spring.
It is uncountable: some gravel, a bag of gravel, a load of gravel — never a gravel or two gravels. Builders lay it for drainage, mix it into concrete, spread it under a shed; where the tarmac stops you get a gravel road. A gravel path, a gravel pit, gravel crunching under tyres — those are the phrases you meet. The adjective gravelly means covered in gravel, and it does something better with voices: a gravelly voice is deep and rough, like the sound the stones make. Bigger than sand, smaller than rocks, and that is the whole range.
1noungravelSmall loose stones, used on paths, drives and roads.
“A lorry tipped a load of gravel onto the drive.”
synonyms: shingle, chippings
gravel is loose stone.
Gravel came from Old French gravele, a little grave — grave there meaning gravel or seashore — and behind that Medieval Latin grava and a Proto-Celtic word grāwā for gravel and pebbles. The root is gʰreh₁w-, to grind. Gravel is stone that has already been ground down, and the name has been saying so all along.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰroh₁weh₂
Proto-Celtic
*grāwā — gravel, pebbles
Medieval Latin
grava
Old French
gravele
Middle English
gravel
English, today
gravel
Built from
From Middle English gravel, grauel, from Old French gravele, diminutive of grave (“gravel, seashore”), from Medieval Latin grava, ultimately from Proto-Celtic grāwā (“gravel, pebbles”) (compare Breton groa, kw grow, Welsh gro), from Proto-Indo-European gʰroh₁weh₂, from gʰreh₁w- (“to grind”). Compare also Old English græfa (“coal”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA