Definition of "granite" []

• A common, coarse-grained, light-colored, hard igneous rock consisting chiefly of quartz, orthoclase or microcline, and mica, used in monuments and for building. (noun)
• Unyielding endurance; steadfastness: a will of granite. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The term granite, as used commercially, includes true granite and such allied rocks as syenite and gneiss."
• "The erupted rocks which have broken through and upheaved these strata have been elevated from depths that are wholly inaccessible to our research; they must, therefore, have existed under the silurian strata, and been composed of the same association of minerals which we term granite, augite, and quartzose porphyry, when they are made known to us by eruption through the surface."
• "He faced back to the road, his expression granite."