Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Geology Porous cinderlike fragments of dark lava.
- noun Metallurgy The refuse of a smelted metal or ore; slag.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Dross; cinder; slag: a word of rather variable and indefinite meaning, generally used in the plural, and with reference to volcanic rocks. See
scoriaceous . - noun A genus of geometrid moths, containing such as the black-veined moth, S. dealbata.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The recrement of metals in fusion, or the slag rejected after the reduction of metallic ores; dross.
- noun Cellular slaggy lava; volcanic cinders.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the scum formed by oxidation at the surface of molten metals
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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From the observatory, where His Majesty's faithful servant still remains, come telegrams that the great pebbles -- what we call scoria -- have ruined
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Porcellanite (also called scoria or clinker) forms from the natural burning of coal beds; it caps the hills with distinctive red-orange rock.
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There are tracts of these which are in part or wholly of volcanic origin; then the hills are called scoria buttes.
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The eruption opened a 2,000ft fissure, and also produced lava fountains that built several hills of bubble-filled lava rocks, called scoria, along the vent.
Signs of the Times 2010
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But I was on a bladed road which the gas companies have recently covered with what they call "scoria".
grouse Diary Entry grouse 2007
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No, what the gas companies call "scoria" is basically crushed rock that is not crushed as fine as gravel.
grouse Diary Entry grouse 2007
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In the majority of cases the lavas consist of a mass of crystals floating in a liquid magma, and the distension of such a mass by the escape of steam from its midst gives rise to the formation of the rough cindery-looking material to which the name of "scoria" is applied.
The San Francisco calamity by earthquake and fire Charles Morris 1877
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Eroded buttes, Hell Creek badlands, scoria (burnt coal) mounds, and salt pans punctuate a thick mat of shortgrass prairie and dusky gray sagebrush.
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It was a shield volcano of thin basaltic flows interleaved with ash and scoria overlaid in places by later volcanic domes, plugs and dykes.
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The interstratified basalt lava, scoria and pyroclastic rocks yield sand, clayey soils in depressions, on plains and on outward draining slopes and a sterile cemented hardpan surface where hydrated.
Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California, Mexico 2008
yarb commented on the word scoria
Citation on scraggy.
July 23, 2008
solitude_stands commented on the word scoria
"There was no real evidence for this, though one writer, pointing to the ubiquitous traces of vulcanism—the scoria, basalt, pumice, and blocks of black glass—that could be found through the islands, concluded that the Pacific, that watery waste, must at some earlier time have been an "abode of fire.""
- Sea People by Christina Thompson, p 121
January 4, 2026