striation

[stɹaɪˈeɪ.ʃən]noun

striation is a noun meaning “One of a number of parallel grooves and ridges in a rock or rocky deposit, formed by repeated twinning or cleaving of crystals” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-T-R-I-A-T-I-O-N, and it appears about once in every 31 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of striation is striations.

What does striation mean?

noun

1
One of a number of parallel grooves and ridges in a rock or rocky deposit, formed by repeated twinning or cleaving of crystals.
2
One of a number of parallel scratch lines in rock outcrops, formed when glaciers dragged rocks across the landscape.
3
The action of marking with a stria.
4
The result of being marked with a stria.
5
a parallel series of small grooves, channels, or impressions typically within a metal roof panel used to help reduce the potential for oil-canning.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce striation?

[stɹaɪˈeɪ.ʃən]

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-striation.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of striation

striations plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is striation?

Striation appears about once in every 31 million words in written English, the 169,822nd most frequent word form in the list.

striation0.0010.010.11101001,00010,000

rarerper million words of written Englishmore common

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Striation in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

Language	Words
French	striation (action of marking with a stria)
German	Streifen (action of marking with a stria), Streifung (result of being marked with a stria)
Portuguese	estriamento (action of marking with a stria)
Spanish	estriación (action of marking with a stria)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does striation come from?

From striate + -ion.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).