mortar
Other forms: mortars; mortared; mortaring
A mortar is a bowl-shaped container that you can grind things in using a pestle. You probably buy your spices pre-ground at the store, but if you wanted to be old-school, you could grind them yourself with a mortar and pestle.
Mortar is an old word — it comes from Old English, and using a mortar to smash things up is old way of cooking. It's also the builder's paste used between bricks. If you've heard the phrase "brick and mortar," that's a style of building, as well as a general phrase for something with a real building (as opposed to an internet business). And it's also a gun that fires high bullets that land short-range.
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a bowl-shaped vessel in which substances can be ground and mixed with a pestletype of:vesselan object used as a container (especially for liquids)
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a substance used as a bond in masonry or for covering a walltype of:building materialmaterial used for constructing buildings
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plaster with mortar
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a muzzle-loading high-angle gun with a short barrel that fires shells at high elevations for a short rangesynonyms: howitzer, trench mortartype of:high-angle guna cannon that can be fired at a high elevation for relatively short ranges
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Vocabulary lists containing mortar
Whip your culinary vocabulary into shape with this list of words for kitchen essentials.
Originally published as "On the Duty of Disobedience" and based on an 1848 lecture, Thoreau's work is a civil libertarian classic. Questioning the authority of all governments, Thoreau especially challenges both the right of the state to tax him and the morality of a government that allows slavery. Read the full text here.