Granite (IPA: /ˈɡrænɪt/) is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granites are usually medium to coarsely crystalline, occasionally with some individual crystals larger than the groundmass forming a rock known as porphyry. Granites can be pink to dark gray or even black, depending on their chemistry and mineralogy. Outcrops of granite tend to form tors, and rounded massifs. Granites sometimes occur in circular depressions surrounded by a range of hills, formed by the metamorphic aureole or hornfels.
Granite is nearly always massive, hard and tough, and it is for this reason it has gained widespread use as a construction stone. The average density of granite is 2.75 g·cm−3 with a range of 1.74 g·cm−3 to 2.80 g·cm−3. The word granite comes from the Latin granum, a grain, in reference to the coarse-grained structure of such a crystalline rock.