Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A titanium accessory mineral in some granite and metamorphic rocks, CaTiSiO5, occurring in usually small brown or yellow crystals and sometimes used as a gemstone.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The mineral titanite.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Min.) A mineral found usually in thin, wedge-shaped crystals of a yellow or green to black color. It is a silicate of titanium and calcium; titanite.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun mineralogy
titanite
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Professor David and R. Priestley, the geologists of Shackleton's expedition, refer to Ferrar's and Prior's description of the foundation rocks, and state that according to their own investigations the foundation rocks consist of banded gneis, gneissic granite, grano-diorite, and diorite rich in sphene, besides coarse crystalline limestone as enclosures in the gneiss.
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In addition to providing a ready means of identifying the diamond, a high degree of dispersion in a stone of pronounced color would lead one to consider sphene, demantoid garnet (if green), and zircon (which might be reddish, yellowish, brown, or of other colors), and if the stone did not agree with these in its other properties one should suspect _glass_.
A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public Frank Bertram Wade
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As they are both colored stones (sphene is usually yellowish, sometimes greenish or brown), the vividness of their color-play is much diminished by absorption of light within them.
A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public Frank Bertram Wade
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All the precious stones, except moonstone, opal and sphene, have at least the hardness of quartz, and can barely be scratched by metals, even by hard steel.
Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 Various
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The rarer stones, sphene and epidote, likewise exhibit this property markedly.
A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public Frank Bertram Wade
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Shackleton's expedition, refer to Ferrar's and Prior's description of the foundation rocks, and state that according to their own investigations the foundation rocks consist of banded gneiss, gneissic granite, grano-diorite, and diorite rich in sphene, besides coarse crystalline limestone as enclosures in the gneiss.
The South Pole; an account of the Norwegian Antarctic expedition in the "Fram," 1910-12 — Volume 1 and Volume 2 Roald Amundsen 1900
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Shackleton's expedition, refer to Ferrar's and Prior's description of the foundation rocks, and state that according to their own investigations the foundation rocks consist of banded gneiss, gneissic granite, grano-diorite, and diorite rich in sphene, besides coarse crystalline limestone as enclosures in the gneiss.
The South Pole; an account of the Norwegian antarctic expedition in the "Fram," 1910-1912 — Volume 2 Roald Amundsen 1900
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The proper minerals of titanium are rutile (TiO_ {2}), titaniferous iron (titanate of iron), and sphene (titanate and silicate of lime).
A Text-book of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. Cornelius Beringer 1886
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_New violet schorl_, or _sphene_ of HAÜY, (_rayonnante en goutière_ of SAUSSURE) in the same place.
Paris as It Was and as It Is Francis W. Blagdon 1798
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You can look into the stones with double refraction, like zircon and sphene, but they have Mohs scores of 7 and 5.5, so while they're very sparkly, they're not hard.
Ask MetaFilter MayNicholas 2010
hernesheir commented on the word sphene
A titanium accessory mineral in some granitic and metamorphic rocks, CaTiSiO5, occurring in usually small brown or yellow crystals and sometimes used as a gemstone. Also called titanite.
(French sphène, from Greek sphēn, wedge.)
The crystals I have observed were very small and yellow-brown to root-beer colored, and required a 6X-10X hand-lens or jewelers' loop to clearly discern among the fine-grained quartz, feldspar, and micaceous crystals on hand-samples of the stone. Good examples are to be found in the grano-diorite rocks of the canyon east of Salt Lake City, UT, USA where the LDS church's geneology and records vaults are located in vast repositories mined into native rock of the mountains rising behind SLC.
December 31, 2008