Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A light-colored igneous rock consisting essentially of alkali feldspar.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A volcanic rock exhibiting a characteristic roughness when handled. At present it is sought to limit the term to rocks composed essentially of sanidine, with more or less triclinic feldspar; hornblende, biotite, and magnetite are also frequently present in greater or less quantity. Much of the rock of the Cordilleras, formerly called trachyte, is now considered by lithologists to belong move properly among the andesites.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An igneous rock, usually light gray in color and breaking with a rough surface. It consists chiefly of orthoclase feldspar with sometimes hornblende and mica.
Etymologies
- French, from Greek trākhus, rough.
Examples
“The +Puy-de-Dome+ is 4806 ft. above the level of the sea, has no crater, and is covered with a long tufted grass, with here and there a rough spongy rock cropping out, of volcanic origin, and called trachyte, of which the variety found here, and almost here alone, has been named domite.”
“Jackson Slater lowered himself over the crumbling rim of the volcanic plug, then dropped into the cooler, shadowy dimness of a rust-colored soda trachyte rock tube.”
“About 55 statues are made of other stone – red scoria, basalt, or trachyte – and are smaller than the average size of 5 m.”
“Often, where the water flows over beds of dark grey basalt, masses of trachyte, closely resembling syenite, have formed “potholes,” and by mutual action have been worn to pebbles.”
“To the conglomerate and trachyte succeeded black basalt, the first dispread in layers full of bubbles, the latter forming regular prisms, placed like a colonnade supporting the spring of the immense vault, an admirable specimen of natural architecture.”
“He brought with him a hard white stone much resembling trachyte, and fragments of fine green jasper.”
“Presently the quartz made way for long lines and broad patches of a yellow-white, heat-altered clay, often revetted with iron, and passably aping the nobler rock: from one reef I picked up what appeared to be trachyte, white like that of Shaghab.”
“The rugged peaks of the trachyte rocks presented faint outlines on the eastern horizon; at times a few patches of snow, concentrating the vague light, glittered upon the slopes of the distant mountains; certain peaks, boldly uprising, passed through the grey clouds, and reappeared above the moving mists, like breakers emerging in the heavens.”
“But at a later period a wide chasm formed diagonally from south-west to north-east, through which was gradually forced out the trachyte which was to form a mountain chain.”
“In fact, the great plutonic action is confined to the central portion of the island; there, rocks of the trappean and volcanic class, including trachyte, basalt, and tuffs and agglomerates associated with streams of lava, have made this a land of supernatural horrors.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘trachyte’.
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Pet Rocks and Carbon Footprints
Soil samples for stone soup.
palynology, stratigraphy, tse'bit'ai, tse bitai, tse bit ai, bitai, minette, maar, lithosphere, peridotite, gneiss, gabbro and 115 more...
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Geology Words
The descriptive science described.
earth, lithosphere, mineral, convection, heat flow, ore, deep time, fossil, formation, rock, tectonics, extinction and 256 more...
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texture
suberous, sabulous, indurate, achondrite, wale, corneouss, knit, barathea, trachyte, cancellous, globuliferous, pongee and 29 more...
chained_bear "'...where the stream can be crossed as it flows over an uncomfortable bed of shattered obsidian and trachyte, that I met Mr Butcher, who agrees that the island is obviously volcanic...'"
--Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World, 380 Feb 23, 2008