gem
Americannoun
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gems
plural
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a cut and polished precious stone or pearl fine enough for use in jewelry.
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something likened to or prized as such a stone because of its beauty or worth.
His painting was the gem of the collection.
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a person held in great esteem or affection.
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British Printing. a 4-point type of a size between brilliant and diamond.
verb (used with object)
adjective
noun
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a precious or semiprecious stone used in jewellery as a decoration; jewel
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a person or thing held to be a perfect example; treasure
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a size of printer's type, approximately equal to 4 point
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a type of small sweet cake
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of gem
1275–1325; Middle English gemme < Old French < Latin gemma bud, jewel; replacing Middle English yimme, Old English gim ( m ) < Latin
Explanation
A gem is a precious or semi-precious stone, or a jewel. A silversmith might experiment with adding gems to her rings and necklaces. The sparkly gem in your grandmother's fancy ring might be a diamond, while your aunt appears to prefer the polished greenish-blue gems called turquoise. If you're trained to identify and put a value on gems, you can call yourself a gemologist. Gem is from the Old French gemme, which has a Latin root, gemma, "precious stone or jewel."
Vocabulary lists containing gem
In A Sedimental Mood: Rock and Gem Vocabulary
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Essential Three-Letter Words, Part 2
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for January 27–February 2, 2024
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Some customers were still coming by, hoping to unearth a rare gem amid the clothes, records, dishes and other items.
From Barron's ● Aug. 20, 2026
The warm wooden accents of the home make the architectural gem feel intimately connected to the surrounding environmental beauty.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 11, 2026
For Italian travel expert and writer Alessia Armenise, supermarkets are an underrated gem.
From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2026
An underrated gem often overshadowed by its predecessor, “Some Girls,” and its successor, “Tattoo You,” “Emotional Rescue” finds the Stones in fine form at the dawn of a new decade.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026
The orderly troupe of farm animals lined along the windowsill and the straitlaced dolls poised in the various rooms of their open-sided mansion waited for the gem of her first sentence.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
Let me conclude with a few gems from the experts I spoke to about life in your 70s.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 23, 2026
Below, a mix of 2026 blockbusters and little-talked-about gems that are worth any extra moments you may find yourself with this month.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
With commercial tourism, social media and vlogging much of today’s world feels overexposed and overexplained, with seemingly every destination photographed, every experience reviewed and all hidden gems channeled into content.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 26, 2026
Prices across the industry have fallen because fewer people are buying diamonds than in the past, especially in China, and there is stiff competition from much cheaper lab-grown gems.
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026
To him strawberries were a holy mystery, jewels of sugar, deep red gems, sweet orbs, succulent rubies.
From "Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel" by David Guterson
A search for “Barbie” on the company’s website returns rose-gold jewelry and pink gemmed rings.
From Reuters ● Jul. 23, 2023
Moreover, the first images of crosses portray them more as slender, gemmed staffs than as sturdy instruments of execution.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 14, 2017
The passing rivers, the sounds rising from street gratings, the gemmed bridges were recognizable in name, but transposed to a different key.
From New York Times ● Apr. 24, 2014
Depicted in his role as minister of justice, he wears an impressively gemmed and starchy crown, but the face below it looks miserable.
From New York Times ● Mar. 25, 2010
There before him lay the view he had so long hoped to behold: a wilderness of forest, gemmed with sparkling streams, and bounded by the watery horizon.
From Vasco Nu?ez de Balboa by Frederick Albion Ober
And so all the magnificence and beauty of the daily heavens, and the nightly gemming of the empty places with perpetually burning stars, are lost to them!
From Expositions of Holy Scripture Psalms by Alexander Maclaren
Its little yellow stars may now be seen gemming the woodsides, when all around is cold, comfortless, and dead.
From Mirror of the Months by Peter George Patmore
Lady Frances observed it, and smiling said,— "You are gemming my ornaments, setting them in crystal instead of gold."
From The Buccaneer A Tale by Mrs. S. C. Hall
Bells of dew glittered upon the bushes rooted in the walls, and upon the ivy-grown pillars; and gemming the countless spiders' webs stretched from bough to bough, showed they were all unbroken.
From The Lancashire Witches A Romance of Pendle Forest by William Harrison Ainsworth
Like some palpable, suffocating substance it filled the plain and mounted far up into the air, even to the blue-black sky, whence a million gemming stars pierced it with their diamond lances.
From With Hoops of Steel by Dan Smith
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
