granite

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A common, coarse-grained, light-colored, hard igneous rock consisting chiefly of quartz, orthoclase or microcline, and mica, used in monuments and for building.
2. n. Unyielding endurance; steadfastness: a will of granite.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A rock composed of orthoclase-feldspar, mica, and quartz, and having a thoroughly crystalline-granular texture. While orthoclase is an essential constituent of true granite, triclinic feldspars are often present in smaller quantity. The mica is sometimes white or silvery (muscovite), and sometimes dark-brown or even black (biotite). Both varieties are occasionally present together, and some lithologists call only that variety true granite in which both are present. While granite is a thoroughly crystalline rock, distinctly formed crystals of the component minerals are rarely seen in it, except ou the walls of cavities. The color of granite is somewhat varied, although in much the larger number of cases the predominating tint is a light gray; some varieties, however, are almost as white as white marble; others are of a lightred or a pink color, which tint is due to the predominance of a rose-colored feldspar. Some varieties of granite are very massive and homogeneous in texture; hence this rock can often be quarried in blocks of large size. Granite is much used for building purposes where massiveness and durability are the chief requisites. It resists very poorly, however, the action of fire, fiaking off and crumbling under the influence of heat. Many varieties take a fine polish, and are used for interior decoration and for monumental work. Its hardness and coarseness of texture make it unfit for statuary. The theory of the origin of granite, and its relations to the distinctly eruptive lavas on the one hand and the distinctly stratified rocks on the other, have long been subjects of discussion among geologists. Granite has often been called a “Plutonic” rock, to express the idea generally held by geologists that it has become consolidated at considerable depth below the surface, not having been poured out of a volcanic orifice like lava. Among the rocks ordinarily designated as granite by quarrymen and others there are many varieties, with a correspondingly varied scientific nomenclature. Of these varieties and names the following are the more important: pegmatite, which includes the granites in which the component materials are present in crystalline masses of large dimensions; porphyritic granite, a variety with distinct crystals of feldspar scattered through a fine-grained material; graphic, granite, in which the quartz has assumed forms somewhat resembling Hebrew characters; syenite, syenitic granite, hornblende, granite, or amphibole granite, a rock in which hornblende occurs in addition to the other normal constituents of granite, the most famous locality of which variety is Syene, in upper Egypt, from which the name is derived (see syenite for the more modern application of this name); granitite, a granite in which only a dark-colored variety of mica occurs; granulite, a fine-grained granite with red garnets; and greisen, a granitic rock nearly or quite destitute of feldspar, interesting from its frequent association with valuable minerals and metalliferous ores, especially those of tin. See granitite, granulite, pegmatite, and greisen for fuller definitions of these words.”
2. n. A kind of rough-grained water-ice or sherbet. Also called rock-punch and rock ice-cream. See the extract.
3. n. Same as granite-ware
4. n. In the quantitative system of classification (1902), it is proposed to apply the term granite for field purposes to all phanerocrystalline rocks composed of quartz and feldspar of any kind, with mica, hornblende, or other ferromagnesian mineral, if present in subordinate amounts. See rock.
5. n. A granite containing two micas: the granite proper of some authors.

Wiktionary

1. n. A group of igneous and plutonic rocks composed primarily of feldspar and quartz. Usually contains one or more dark minerals, which may be mica, pyroxene, or amphibole. Granite is quarried for building stone, road gravel, decorative stone, and tombstones. Common colors are gray, white, pink, and yellow-brown.
2. n. uncountable, figuratively Toughness; the quality of having a thick skin or being rough.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Geol.) A crystalline, granular rock, consisting of quartz, feldspar, and mica, and usually of a whitish, grayish, or flesh-red color. It differs from gneiss in not having the mica in planes, and therefore in being destitute of a schistose structure.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. something having the quality of granite (unyielding firmness)
2. n. plutonic igneous rock having visibly crystalline texture; generally composed of feldspar and mica and quartz