Number & MeasureGreek → English
Carat
/ˈkærət/noun
A unit of gemstone weight equal to 200 milligrams, and a twenty-fourth part in measuring gold purity.
The Greek roots
κεράτιον
kerátion
little horn, carob seed
Literally: “little horn”
Follow a root:κεράτιον1 word
The story of the word
κεράτιον is the diminutive of κέρας, horn, and it named the carob seed because the pod curves like one. Those seeds served as a small weight for gold and gems, and the word travelled by way of Arabic qīrāṭ and Italian carato into French and English. The old story that carob seeds are unusually uniform has not survived weighing them; they vary about as much as any other seed. The carat was fixed at exactly 200 milligrams by international agreement in 1907.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Arabic → Italian → French → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
Same family
keratinrhinocerostriceratops
In a sentence
A one-carat stone weighs a fifth of a gram and costs what a used car costs.
Eighteen carat gold is three parts gold to one part alloy.