Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A green to black amphibolic mineral, CaNa(Mg,Fe)4(Al,Fe,Ti)3Si6O22(OH,F)2, formed in the late stages of cooling in igneous rock.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A common mineral, crystallizing in the monoclinic system with a prismatic angle of 124½°. Parallel to this, the fundamental prism, it has perfect cleavage. It occurs usually in massive forms, varying in structure from compact to columnar and fibrous, with the fibers parallel or curved, and also, but less often, lamellar. In composition it varies widely, from the white tremolite, a silicate of calcium and magnesium, to the green actinolite, which contains also more or less iron, and to the dark-green, brown, and black varieties, pargasite and common hornblende, which contain alumina as well as lime, magnesia, and iron; manganese is also present in some varieties, and less commonly sodium and potassium. Asbestos, mountain-cork, and mountain-leather are included here, and nephrite or jade is a tough, compact variety. Hornblende is a constituent of many crystalline rocks. as syenite, diorite, hornblende schist, some kinds of trachyte, andesite, etc. The name amphibole is often used as the general term to include all the varieties. The hornblende or amphibole group of minerals includes also the related orthorhombic species anthophyllite, and the monoclinic arfvedsonite, crocidolite. glaucophane, etc. In geology, hornblende or hornblendic is often prefixed to names of rocks to indicate the accidental presence in greater or less quantity of that mineral, in addition to the other ingredients which the rock usually contains. Hornblende is a frequent result of the metamorphism of other minerals, especially of augite.
Wiktionary
- n. A green to black amphibole mineral, of complex structure, formed in the late stages of cooling in igneous rock.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Min.) The common black, or dark green or brown, variety of amphibole. (See amphibole.) It belongs to the aluminous division of the species, and is also characterized by its containing considerable iron. Also used as a general term to include the whole species.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a green to black mineral of the amphibole group; consists of silicates of calcium and sodium and magnesium and iron
Etymologies
- From German Hornblende, from Horn ("horn") + Blende (see blende). (Wiktionary)
- German : Horn, horn (from Middle High German, from Old High German) + Blende, blende; see blende. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“This stone is a volcanic rock called hornblende, of very fine grain, with minute specks of mica.”
“An examination of the stones which fell at Fort de France showed them to be of a variety of lava called hornblende and andesite.”
“The remaining rocks from here are richer in lime and iron, and show a series of gradual transitions from micacious granite, through grano-diorite to quartz diorite, with considerable quantities of dark mica, and green hornblende.”
“Most significant is the presence of the Sinharaja Basic Zone, consisting of hornblende, pyriclasts, basic charnokites, pyroxene amphibolites and scapolite-bearing calc-granulites and blended with small amounts of quartzites, garnet-biotite gneisses and intermediate charnokites.”
“Elsewhere, Precambrian granitic gneiss, Precambrian hornblende gneiss, and fanglomerate are common (Berg and others, 1980).”
Ecoregions of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia (EPA)
“Strange, scholastic, didactic, passionless, bloodless man, who denotes classes of souls as a botanist disposes of a carex, and visits doleful hells as a stratum of chalk or hornblende!”
“Six widespread tephras ~0.1–1.0 cm thick with rhyolitic to dacitic glass and/or phenocrysts of feldspar or hornblende are preserved in the glacial lakes of Las Cajas National Park, southern Ecuador.”
“Dark trappean rocks full of hornblende have in many places burst through these schists, and appear in nodules on the surface.”
A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries
“About Losito we found the trap had given place to hornblende schist, mica schist, and various schorly rocks.”
“On some of the hills the rocks were shivered into irregular pieces, and displayed crystals of quartz, small laminae of mica, and occasionally hornblende.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hornblende’.
-
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 2608 more...
-
Blendes
"blende n. An ore of zinc; a native sulphid of zinc, but commonly containing more or less iron, also a little cadmium, and sometimes rarer elements (gallium, indium). Its color is mostly brown and ...
zinc-blende, manganese-blende, ruby-blende, blende, hornblende, pitchblende, zinc blende, manganese blende, ruby blende, pitch-blende, bismuth blende, antimony-blende and 5 more...
-
Just 'cause I like 'em, H
hurlyburly, hurtle, hodgepodge, heartwood, hatch, halo, hooptedoodle, hacienda, hairpin, heyday, hardscrabble, hopper and 208 more...
-
The Sirens of Titan
Words gathered while reading The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut.
edwardian, rakehell, chrono-synclastic..., parvenu, chiton, dottle, ort, residua, narwhal, lulu, peyotl, peignoir and 49 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hornblende.
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.