What does boart mean?
Boart is a noun referring to diamonds of such poor quality that they cannot be used as gemstones. Rather than being discarded, this flawed material is highly valued by industry: boart is harder than nearly any other substance, so it is crushed into powder or grit and set into the edges and tips of cutting tools, drill bits, grinding wheels, and polishing compounds. In the diamond trade, stones are sorted according to whether they are gem quality or suitable only for industrial use, and boart represents the latter category — small, heavily included, misshapen, or off-colour crystals. The word is a specialist term, encountered chiefly in mining reports, trade publications, and descriptions of industrial manufacturing, and the spelling 'bort' is considerably more widespread than 'boart'. Although it denotes the humblest grade of diamond, boart has substantial commercial worth, since industrial demand for super-hard abrasives keeps even the ugliest diamonds economically useful.
nounBoart (also spelled bort) is diamond material of inferior quality — small, flawed, or off-colour diamonds that are unsuitable for cutting into gemstones and are instead crushed for use as an abrasive in industrial cutting, grinding, and polishing tools.
- Inferior or flawed diamond material, unfit for jewellery, used industrially as an abrasive.
"The drill bits were tipped with boart because only the hardest abrasive could cut through the granite."
"The lapidary set aside all the boart from each parcel, keeping only stones clear enough to facet."
"Crushed boart is embedded in saw blades and drill crowns for cutting stone and concrete."
Normally treated as an uncountable mass noun; the inflected plural is uncommon and largely confined to older trade literature.
"Several tons of boart were shipped to the cutting works that year."
Some diamonds are too ugly for rings but still hard enough to slice through solid rock — that unglamorous grit is called boart.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of boart
Boart entered English as a term of the diamond trade, with the spelling 'bort' now standard and 'boart' a recognized variant. Its ultimate origin is not firmly established; it is generally associated with early modern European diamond-trading vocabulary, possibly via Dutch, but a definitive source cannot be stated with confidence.
How boart is actually used
A technical term used mainly in the diamond trade and mining industry. The spelling 'bort' is far more common than 'boart'. It carries no figurative or informal uses.
Easily confused with boart
Bort is simply the more common spelling of the same word; 'boart' is a variant spelling used for identical material.