Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A common crystalline form of natural calcium carbonate, CaCO3, that is the basic constituent of limestone, marble, and chalk. Also called calcspar.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Native calcium carbonate, or carbonate of lime, one of the commonest of minerals. It occurs in a great variety of crystalline forms, rhombohedrons, scalenohedrons, etc.; the fundamental form being a rhombohedron with a terminal angle of 105°, parallel to which the crystallized mineral has highly perfect cleavage, so that a mass of it breaks up with a blow into a great number of small rhombohedrons. The transparent colorless variety is called
Iceland spar or doubly refracting spar, and is used for the prisms of polariscopes. Dogtooth spar is a variety in acute scalenohedral crystals. Satin-spar is a fibrous, and argentine a pearly lamellar variety; the granular, compact, or cryptocrystalline varieties constitute marble, limestone, chalk, etc. Stalactites and stalagmites are forms deposited in limestone caves; calc-sinter, calc-tuff, or travertin is a porous deposit from springs or rivers which in flowing through limestone rocks have become charged with calcium carbonate. Agaric mineral, or rock-milk, is a soft white variety easily crumbled in the fingers; it is sometimes deposited in caverns. (See cut underspar .)
Wiktionary
- n. a very widely distributed crystalline form of calcium carbonate, CaCO3, found as limestone, chalk and marble
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Calcium carbonate, or carbonate of lime. It is rhombohedral in its crystallization, and thus distinguished from aragonite. It includes common limestone, chalk, and marble. Called also
calc-spar andcalcareous spar .
WordNet 3.0
- n. a common mineral consisting of crystallized calcium carbonate; a major constituent of limestone
Examples
“The calcite is basically floating in solution around the shell, and it deposits on the shell like a forming crystal.”
“The name calcite (Lat. _calx_, _calcis_, meaning burnt lime) is of comparatively recent origin, and was first applied, in 1836, to the”
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 "Bulgaria" to "Calgary"
“The latter mode of origin is suggested by the frequent occurrence of calamine pseudomorphous after calcite, that is, having the form of calcite crystals.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 "Bulgaria" to "Calgary"
“In such cases the cleavage of one stone is often of paramount importance in testing the cleavage of another, as is seen in the perfection of the cleavage planes of calcite, which is used in the polariscope.”
“The research works by using a naturally forming crystal called calcite which has extraordinary light bending abilities.”
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph
“The ancient skeletal fossils are made not of bone, but of calcite, which is the same material that makes up the rock matrix in which they are embedded.”
“The stone lets out a chemical called calcite which means that the building stays white even when exposed to the elements.”
“They may see colors that are due to other minerals such as calcite, which forms hard pan or caliche in the -- in certain parts of the U.S. and which is deposited, in most cases, by water.”
“Another form of calcite which is to be sparingly found is what is called dogtooth spar, having the form shown in Fig. 4.”
“Some of the dissolved substances of weathering, such as calcite, quartz, and iron oxide, are carried down and deposited in openings of the rocks, where they act as cements.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘calcite’.
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Minerals and Mineralogy
List of minerals, elements, group names and geochemistry terms encountered in the science of mineralogy. I've chosen to avoid capital letters in most examples, though a great many mineral names hon...
galkhaite, xanthoconite, pyrostilpnite, polybasite, pyrargyrite, djurleite, digenite, covellite, chalcocite, cerargirite, acanthite, aeschynite and 2536 more...
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