mica

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“
It is made of a combination of solid lubricant and ground or pulverized mica, that is where it gets its name, and nothing can equal mica as a lubricant if you could apply it to your gear; and to do this it has been combined with a heavy grease.

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Definitions (10)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. noun Any of a group of chemically and physically related aluminum silicate minerals, common in igneous and metamorphic rocks, characteristically splitting into flexible sheets used in insulation and electrical equipment.

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Examples (50)

  • Each drawing was made on mica, a transparent, flaky mineral which splits into thin, transparent sheets.
  • After the DNA and the cations have adsorbed onto the mica, the surface is washed, air-dried, and promptly imaged.
  • Mining of feldspar and mica was a major industry in the nearby town of Gilsum for many years.
  • (After a photograph by L. Palander The neighbourhood of Konyam Bay consists of crystalline rocks, granite poor in mica, and mica-schist lowermost, and then grey non-fossiliferous carbonate of lime, and last of all magnesian schists, porphyry, and quartzites. —  The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II
  • Under the microscope, the rock consists of biotite, hornblende, serpentinous pseudo-morphs after olivine and possibly after enstatite and magnetite, and may be described as a mica-hornblende-picrite. —  Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 "Bulgaria" to "Calgary"
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Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin mīca, grain (perhaps influenced by micāre, to flash).

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. = Old French (and F.) mie = Italian mica, from Latin mica, a crumb, grain, little bit. Hence ult. miche and mie: see mie.
  2. = French mica = Spanish Portuguese mica, a mineral, from New Latin mica, a glittering mineral (see def.), from Latin mica, a crumb (cf. mica), prob. applied to the mineral on the supposition that it was related to L. micare, shine, glitter.
 

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/ˈmaɪkə/
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