druse

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A crust of tiny crystals lining a rock cavity, usually composed of the same minerals that occur in the rock.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A rock-cavity lined with crystals; a geode, or, as miners call it, a vug. A common word in Germany, adopted from the Slavic: the most important mining region of Germany being the Erzgebirge, on the borders of Bohemia. The word originally meant (in Slavic) ‘brush,’ and was applied to surfaces covered with projecting crystals like teeth, just as comb has been in English. Hence it also came to mean the cavities where such druses are found to occur. In English the word druse is little used at the present time except by mineralogists, and then chiefly in the adjective form drusy (which see). See also geode.
2. n. One of a people and religious sect of Syria, living chiefly in the mountain regions of Lebanon and Anti-libanus and the district of Hauran. The only name they acknowledge is Unitarians (Muahidin); that by which they are known to others is probably from smail Darazi or Durzi, who was their first apostle in Syria. They are fanatical ami warlike, and have had bloody conflicts with their neighbors the Maronites.

Wiktionary

1. n. mineralogy An inner surface with a crust of tiny crystals.
2. n. botany An aggregation of calcium oxalate crystals found in certain plants.
3. n. ophthalmology A tiny yellow or white accumulation of extracellular material that builds up in Bruch's membrane of the eye.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Min.) A cavity in a rock, having its interior surface studded with crystals and sometimes filled with water; a geode.
2. n. One of a people and religious sect dwelling chiefly in the Lebanon mountains of Syria.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. an adherent of an esoteric monotheistic religious sect living in the relative security of the mountains of Syria and Lebanon who believes that Al-hakim was an incarnation of God