granola

Genericized trademark from Granola, a brand of breakfast cereal registered in 1886 by Will Keith Kellogg and in use into the early 20th century.^[1] It was initially known as Granula and renamed Granola to avoid legal problems with James Caleb Jackson, who invented a similar cereal in 1863,^[2] named Granula after the granules of Graham flour, the main ingredient.^[3]

The food and name were revived in the 1960s. By 1967, it appears in American English, probably from Italian grano (“grain”) or granular + the commercial suffix -ola.^[1]

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɡɹəˈnoʊlə/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊlə

granola (countable and uncountable, plural granolas)

2. A breakfast and snack food consisting of loose, crispy pellets made of nuts, rolled oats, honey and other natural ingredients.
3. (slang, countable) Ellipsis of crunchy granola.

• → French: granola
• → Esperanto: granola
• → Japanese: グラノーラ (guranōra)
• → Korean: 그래놀라 (geuraenolla)
• → Polish: granola
• → Portuguese: granola
• → Russian: грано́ла (granóla)
• → Spanish: granola

granola (comparative more granola, superlative most granola)

1. (chiefly Canada, US, of a person) Eating healthy food, supporting the protection of the environment, and having liberal views.

   You see more and more of the granola hippie activist types these days.

   • 2013 November 21, Jame Schaefer, Tobias Winright, Environmental Justice and Climate Change‎^[1], page 228:

     […] behind them a granola-looking mom in denim overalls and a t-shirt was pulling in to do her drop-off . . . from a Prius.

   • 2015 February 13, Dennis Saffran, “The Orwellian Campaign To Project Anti-Vaccination Onto Republicans”, in The Federalist:

     Rather, the anti-vax movement is almost entirely a phenomenon of the affluent crunchy granola Left—as everyone across the political spectrum acknowledged until the last week or so.

   • 2020 June 18, Kiera Butler, “The Anti-Vax Movement’s Radical Shift From Crunchy Granola Purists to Far-Right Crusaders”, in Mother Jones:

     Yet some experts believe that voices from the far right are beginning to drown out those of the crunchy granola crowd.

• Angolar, angolar, organal

Borrowed from English granola.

• IPA^(key): /ɡʁa.no.la/

granola m (plural granolas)

2. granola

• grano

Borrowed from English granola.

• Hyphenation: gra‧no‧la

granola f (plural granolas)

2. granola

• “granola”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “granola”, in Dicionário infopédia da Lingua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Porto: Porto Editora, 2003–2026
• “granola”, in Michaelis Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), São Paulo: Editora Melhoramentos, 2015–2026, →ISBN
• “granola”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026

Borrowed from English granola.

• IPA^(key): /ɡɾaˈnola/ [ɡɾaˈno.la]
• Rhymes: -ola
• Syllabification: gra‧no‧la

granola f (plural granolas)

2. granola

• “granola”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025