Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or being a surface characterized by smooth, shell-like convexities and concavities, as on fractured obsidian.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In mineralogy, having convex elevations and concave depressions like shells: applied principally to such a surface produced by fracture, as exemplified in obsidian.
  • In mathematics, pertaining or relating to the conchoid: as, Holm's conchoidal screw.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective (Min.) Having elevations or depressions in form like one half of a bivalve shell; -- applied principally to a surface produced by fracture.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective mineralogy Of a type of irregular fracture having planar, concentric curves, like those on a mussel shell. Of a mineral having such a fracture, such as flint.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Greek konkhoeidēs, mussellike : konkho-, concho- + -oeidēs, -oid.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From conchoid

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word conchoidal.

Examples

  • This is referred to as conchoidal fracture; glass fractures in the same way.

    Quartz 2008

  • When someone breaks a window the glass shatters in a series of conchoidal breaks—curved fracture lines.

    A Lincoln Rhyme eBook Boxed Set Jeffery Deaver 2001

  • The conchoidal fractures began on the clean side of the glass and ended on the dirty side.

    A Lincoln Rhyme eBook Boxed Set Jeffery Deaver 2001

  • When someone breaks a window the glass shatters in a series of conchoidal breaks — curved fracture lines.

    The Coffin Dancer Deaver, Jeffery 1998

  • The conchoidal fractures began on the clean side of the glass and ended on the dirty side.

    The Coffin Dancer Deaver, Jeffery 1998

  • At ordinary temperatures ebonite is hard and brittle and breaks with a well-marked conchoidal fracture.

    On Laboratory Arts Richard Threlfall

  • The twigs soon become encrusted with a mammelated substance of a red colour more or less deep, nearly transparent, hard, and having a brilliant conchoidal fracture.

    Field's Chromatography or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists George Field

  • The white flakes do not exhibit the true conchoidal fracture in such perfection elsewhere; nor break off in such delicious morsels, edged with delicate brown.

    Acadia or, A Month with the Blue Noses Frederic S. Cozzens

  • This one can see by the traces of conchoidal fracture which they all show.

    Anahuac : or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern Edward Burnett Tylor

  • There were built-up fabrics, called _Charlottes_, caky externally, pulpy within; there were also _marangs_, and likewise custards, -- some of the indolent-fluid sort, others firm, in which every stroke of the teaspoon left a smooth, conchoidal surface like the fracture of chalcedony, with here and there

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860 Various

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.