ophite

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A mottled green rock composed of diabase.
2. n. Any of various green rocks, such as serpentine.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Pertaining to a serpent.
2. n. A name originally applied to certain eruptive (diabasic or doleritic) rocks occurring in the Pyrenees, and later used with similar meaning for rocks found in Spain, Portugal, and northern Africa. In many of these the augite has become converted into uralite, hence they had previously been often classed with the diorites. Michel Lévy divides the French ophites into two types, the first distinguished by the presence of large proportions of the augitic or uralitic constituent, the second by a large predominance of plagioclase. The composition of the rocks which have been designated by different lithologists as ophites is variable, and their relations have not vet been fully worked out.
3. n. A member of a Gnostic body, of very early origin, especially prominent in the second century, and existing as late as the sixth century. Its members were so called because they held that the serpent by which Eve was tempted was the impersonation of divine wisdom, the great teacher and civilizer of the human race. They were also called Naassenes (from Hebrew nāchāsh, a serpent). See Sethian.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. obsolete Of or pertaining to a serpent.
2. n. (Min.) A greenish spotted porphyry, being a diabase whose pyroxene has been altered to uralite; -- first found in the Pyreness. So called from the colored spots which give it a mottled appearance.
3. n. (Eccl. Hist.) A mamber of a Gnostic serpent-worshiping sect of the second century.