Definitions

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

  • noun A mineral, ZnCO3, sometimes used as a source of zinc.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Native anhydrous zinc carbonate, an important ore of zinc: one of the group of rhombohedral carbonates.

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

  • noun (Min.) Native zinc carbonate. It generally occurs in stalactitic, reniform, or botryoidal shapes, of a white to gray, green, or brown color. See Note under calamine.

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

  • noun mineralogy A mineral form of zinc carbonate, ZnCO3, mined as an ore of zinc or as an ornamental stone.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After James Smithson.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Named after James Smithson (1754-1829) in 1832.

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  • Smithsonite, or zinc spar, is zinc carbonate ZnCO3, a mineral ore of zinc. Historically, smithsonite was identified with hemimorphite before it was realised that they were two distinct minerals. The two minerals are very similar in appearance and the term calamine has been used for both, leading to some confusion. The distinct mineral Smithsonite was first described in 1832 and named for British chemist and mineralogist, James Smithson (1754-1829), whose estate financed the Smithsonian Institution.

    Smithsonite is a variably colored trigonal mineral which only rarely is found in well formed crystals. The typical habit is as earthy botryoidal masses. It has a Mohs hardness of 4.5 and a specific gravity of 4.4 to 4.5.

    _Wikipedia

    February 14, 2008