Pelleted

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. A type of substance that has been compressed into small, typically round forms for convenience in use
2. Material that has undergone processing to become small, rounded units for easier application
3. Processed material formed into small, compact spheres to facilitate handling or transport

Etymology: "Pelleted" is the past form of "pellet," so its story is really the story of the small ball beneath it. The root is Latin "pila," meaning "ball," which gave rise to a diminutive, "pilotta," a little ball, in Vulgar Latin, the spoken Latin of ordinary people rather than the written classical language. That diminutive passed into Old French as "pelote," and English borrowed it in Middle English as "pelote" and "pelet." The same Latin root also produced "pelota," a doublet that entered Spanish and English in its own form, so the two words are distant cousins that took different routes. Over time "pellet" moved from the general sense of any small ball to a specific sense of a small, compact body of material. Its earlier uses covered things like a ball of shot or a bullet, and the sense of formed granules came later with industrial and agricultural processing. "Pelleted" carries that compacting idea into the description of material that has been pressed into such shapes.

Synonyms: granulated, beaded, spherical, rounded, particulate

Antonyms: powdered, liquid, fluid, amorphous, soft