What does pumice mean?
Word: Pumice
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Pumice means a light grey stone formed from cooled lava, used for smoothing skin and for polishing.
How do you spell pumice?
Syllables: pum - ice
Tricky part: The ending sounds like iss, but it is not spelt that way.
Watch out for: pumis, pumiss, pumise
Memory tip: The stone is as pale as ice, and that is how the word ends.
Pumice in a sentence
Example 1: Mum keeps a piece of pumice by the bath for her rough heels.
Example 2: A few grey lumps of pumice lay on the beach, light as cork.
Example 3: Builders mix crushed pumice into concrete to make it lighter.
Fun Fact
Pumice is one of the few rocks that can float on water, and rafts of it from undersea volcanoes have drifted across oceans.
Practise the CREST Way
Spell-o-Spell
Only one word in the list is misspelt. Choose the meaning of that word.
1. magma 2. sediment 3. pomice 4. obsidian
a) sand and small stones that settle in water
b) a dark glassy stone made when lava cools fast
c) hot liquid rock below the surface of the earth
d) a rough stone used for smoothing the feet
Show answer
d) a rough stone used for smoothing the feet. The opening vowel is wrong on this one; obsidian, sediment and magma are spelt correctly.
Word Cookie
Find the extra letter in the word:
pummice
a) m
b) c
c) p
d) e
Show answer
a) m. A single m follows the short u here.
Word Cookie
Find the misspelt word in the sentence:
Grandfather rubbed the old terracota flowerpots with pumice until the hard white crust had disappeared from their rims.
a) Grandfather
b) pumice
c) flowerpots
d) terracota
Show answer
d) terracota. The clay used for such pots has a double t in its second half.
Mingle-Mangle
Unjumble the letters in the sentence to form a meaningful word:
The geography teacher passed round a lump of ueipmc so that we could feel how light it was.
a) pebble
b) plaster
c) pewter
d) pumice
Show answer
d) pumice. A u, an m and a c sit in the jumble, and only one choice has them.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Why is pumice so light for a stone?
a) it is hollow with a very thin crust
b) it is mostly dried salt and sand
c) it is made of thin layers of chalk
d) it is full of tiny pockets of air
Show answer
d) it is full of tiny pockets of air
2. Where would a geologist expect to find pumice?
a) near an old volcano
b) in a coal seam
c) beside a glacier
d) on a coral reef
Show answer
a) near an old volcano
