Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The primary ore of zinc, occurring in usually yellow-brown or brownish-black crystals or cleavage masses, essentially ZnS with some cadmium, iron, and manganese. Also called blende, zinc blende.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The native zinc sulphid more familiarly known as zinc-blende. See blende.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Min.) Zinc sulphide; -- called also
blende ,black-jack ,false galena , etc. See blende (a).
WordNet 3.0
- n. an ore that is the chief source of zinc; consists largely of zinc sulfide in crystalline form
Etymologies
- From Greek σφαλερὀς (sfaledos) "treacherous", named in 1847. (Wiktionary)
- Greek sphaleros, slippery, deceitful (from sphallein, to trip, from its being easily mistaken for galena) + -ite1. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Indium is retrieved as a by-product of zinc ores, specifically from the mineral sphalerite, where its abundance can be as high as almost 900 parts per million (ppm) or as low as 1 ppm.”
“It is now known that it is relatively abundant in some but not all zinc sulphide (sphalerite or ZnS) ore deposits.”
“These minerals form with the zinc mineral sphalerite.”
“Some important metallic minerals are: hematite (a source of iron), bauxite (a source of aluminum), sphalerite (a source of zinc) and galena (a source of lead).”
“It is also found in zinc ore (sphalerite) and in coal.”
“Most cadmium used in industry is recovered from sphalerite (zinc sulfide), the principle ore of zinc where cadmium atoms replace some of zinc atoms in the sphalerite.”
“This is especially important for those valuable minerals which exhibit a brittle to very brittle tenacity, such as cassiterite, sphalerite and the tungsten minerals scheelite and wolframite.”
“The Kentucky display contained also zinc ore and sphalerite, lead ore and barite, lead and zinc ore, and fluarite from the mines in Chittenden County; zinc and lead ores and metallic zinc from "the Joplin district of Kentucky;" sphalerite and galena from”
Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
“This substance occurs as the mineral sphalerite, and is one of the most valued ores of zinc.”
“A set of specimens was exhibited by the Ellenville Zinc Company, consisting of strikingly beautiful crystalline masses of quartz galina, sphalerite and chalcopyrite and specimens of the rare mineral, brookite.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sphalerite’.
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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...
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my favorite geology terms
(i'm a rock nerd, so what? :P)
dodecahedron, schist, gneiss, rhombic, conchoidal, metamorphose, loam, shale, sphalerite, apatite, orbital harmony, carboniferous and 26 more...
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Fun words from engineering textbooks
packet, ethernet, bandwidth, bus, topology, coxial, gateway, entropy, sphalerite, polycrystalline, viscoelasticity, creep and 12 more...
Tweets
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