Definitions

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

  • noun A type of peridotite containing both clinopyroxene and orthopyroxene, with olivine being the most abundant mineral.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A crystalline aggregate of olivin, enstatite, and diallage, with some picotite: a rock occurring about Lake Lherz and in the adjacent regions in the French Pyrenees.

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

  • noun (Min.) An igneous rock consisting largely of chrysolite, with pyroxene and picotite (a variety of spinel containing chromium).

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

  • noun mineralogy A dark-green igneous rock consisting largely of chrysolite, with pyroxene and picotite.

Etymologies

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

[ Lherz, (Lers), pond in southern France next to a massif containing the mineral + –lite.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Lherz in the Pyrenées +‎ -lite.

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Examples

  • The signal buried in the Galileo data indicated that it came from a type of rock similar to lherzolite - a coarse-grained, relatively loosely compressed rock - within Io, and quite a lot of it.

    TIME.com: Top Stories 2011

  • On Earth, lherzolite is never found below certain depths since the pressure would cause it to convert to a different, denser type of rock.

    TIME.com: Top Stories 2011

  • Tests have shown that the signatures detected by Galileo are consistent with a rock like lherzolite, an igneous rock rich in silicates of magnesium and iron.

    BBC News - Home 2011

  • All three lithologies have abundant mantle xenoliths (eclogite, garnet lherzolite and garnet harzburgite) up to 20 cm in size and abundant mantle-derived garnets.

    Marketwire - Breaking News Releases 2009

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