chalk
- a soft, white, powdery limestone consisting chiefly of fossil shells of foraminifers.
- a prepared piece of chalk or chalklike substance for marking, as a blackboard crayon.
- a mark made with chalk.
- a score or tally.
- to mark or write with chalk.
- to rub over or whiten with chalk.
- to treat or mix with chalk: to chalk a billiard cue.
- to make pale; blanch: Terror chalked her face.
- (of paint) to powder from weathering.
- of, made of, or drawn with chalk.
- chalk up,
- to score or earn: They chalked up two runs in the first inning.
- to charge or ascribe to: It was a poor performance, but may be chalked up to lack of practice.
Origin of chalk
Related Words for chalk
cream, buttermilk, half-and-half, choice, pick, darling, idol, impress, seal, delineate, portray, depict, chart, paint, chalk, bleach, compose, rewrite, create, scrawlExamples from the Web for chalk
Contemporary Examples of chalk
The Cadet turned suddenly with a surprised look, opened his hand and said ‘a piece of chalk,’ at the same time displaying it.
Heroin used to come in the same way, either packed in bundles of wax baggies or as chunks resembling sticks of chalk.
Notes were scrawled on a large white board, and “The Internet Association” was written in chalk on a blackboard.
Submit to his apologia for Murmelstein, or chalk this up to a case of a filmmaker courting controversy?
Confessions of a Death Camp Collaborator: Claude Lanzmann’s ‘The Last of the Unjust’Jimmy So
February 7, 2014
In a vain attempt at positive self-reinforcement, chalk all this up to maybe having worked out too hard last week.
Historical Examples of chalk
The chalk is deeply indented in many places, and is honey-combed with caves.
Yorkshire Painted And DescribedGordon Home
The fascination of writing on it with chalk still obsessed the children.
KMary Roberts Rinehart
Where's that piece o' chalk you had when you marked out your tumbler-quilt?
Meadow GrassAlice Brown
I'll chalk a lane into the closet, an' we'll both keep a right o' way there.
Meadow GrassAlice Brown
A may bush, overhanging a little precipice of chalk, caught her eye.
The Incomplete AmoristE. Nesbit
chalk
- a soft fine-grained white sedimentary rock consisting of nearly pure calcium carbonate, containing minute fossil fragments of marine organisms, usually without a cementing material
- a piece of chalk or a substance like chalk, often coloured, used for writing and drawing on a blackboard
- a line, mark, etc made with chalk
- billiards snooker a small cube of prepared chalk or similar substance for rubbing the tip of a cue
- British a score, tally, or record
- as alike as chalk and cheese or as different as chalk and cheese informal totally different in essentials
- by a long chalk British informal by far
- can't tell chalk from cheese or doesn't know chalk from cheese to be unable to judge or appreciate important differences
- not by a long chalk British informal by no means; not possibly
- (modifier) made of chalk
- to draw or mark (something) with chalk
- (tr) to mark, rub, or whiten with or as if with chalk
- (intr) (of paint) to become chalky; powder
- (tr) to spread chalk on (land) as a fertilizer
Word Origin for chalk
Word Origin and History for chalk
Old English cealc "chalk, lime, plaster; pebble," a West Germanic borrowing from Latin calx (2) "limestone, lime (crushed limestone), small stone," from Greek khalix "small pebble," which many trace to a PIE root for "split, break up." In most Germanic languages still with the "limestone" sense, but in English transferred to the opaque, white, soft limestone found abundantly in the south of the island. Modern spelling is from early 14c. The Latin word for "chalk" was creta, which also is of unknown origin.
1570s, "to mix with chalk;" 1590s as "to mark with chalk," from chalk (n.). Related: Chalked; chalking. Old English had cealcian "to whiten." Certain chalk marks on shipped objects meant "admitted" or "shipped free," hence some figurative senses. Chalk boards also were commonly used in keeping credit, score, etc., hence figurative use of chalk it up (1903).
chalk
- A soft, white, gray, or yellow limestone consisting mainly of calcium carbonate and formed primarily from the accumulation of fossil microorganisms such as foraminifera and calcareous algae. Chalk is used in making lime, cement, and fertilizers, and as a whitening pigment in ceramics, paints, and cosmetics. The chalk used in classrooms is usually artificial.