Definitions

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

  • noun The study of minerals, including their distribution, identification, and properties.
  • noun A book or treatise on mineralogy.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The science which treats of the properties of mineral species (see mineral), which teaches how to characterize, distinguish, and classify them, and which investigates their occurrence in nature with reference to their mode of formation (paragenesis) and the alteration which they may have undergone.

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

  • noun The science which treats of minerals, and teaches how to describe, distinguish, and classify them.
  • noun A treatise or book on this science.

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

  • noun petrology The branch of petrology that studies minerals.
  • noun Its mineral materials.
  • noun A treatise on mineralogy.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the branch of geology that studies minerals: their structure and properties and the ways of distinguishing them

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

mineral + -logy

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Examples

Comments

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  • Perhaps also a turn of phrase used to liken someone (or something) to one who digs ore from the ground. Not to be confused with minoralogy.

    December 20, 2007