tourmaline
English
Etymology
From French tourmaline, ultimately from Sinhalese තෝරමල්ලී (tōramallī, “carnelian”)
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈtʊɚ.mə.lɪn/, /ˈtʊɚ.məˌlin/
Audio (US): (file)
Noun
tourmaline (countable and uncountable, plural tourmalines)
- (mineralogy) A complex black or dark-coloured borosilicate mineral, compounded with various chemical elements and considered a semi-precious stone.
- 1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 3:
- The floor of the chamber was tesselated, of marble and green tourmaline, and on every square of tourmaline was carven the image of a fish: as the dolphin, the conger, the cat-fish, the salmon, the tunny, the squid, and other wonders of the deep.
- 2012 March, Lee A. Groat, “Gemstones”, in American Scientist[1], volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 14 June 2012, page 128:
- Although there are dozens of different types of gems, among the best known and most important are […] . (Common gem materials not addressed in this article include amber, amethyst, chalcedony, garnet, lazurite, malachite, opals, peridot, rhodonite, spinel, tourmaline, turquoise and zircon.)
- A transparent gemstone cut from it.
Hyponyms
- blue tourmaline
- canary tourmaline
- chrome tourmaline
- dravite
- green tourmaline
- indicolite
- indigolite
- multicolored tourmaline
- Paraiba tourmaline
- rubellite
- schorl
- shocking pink tourmaline
- watermelon tourmaline
- yellow tourmaline
Related terms
Translations
both senses
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Anagrams
French
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /tuʁ.ma.lin/
Audio: (file)
Noun
tourmaline f (plural tourmalines)
Further reading
- “tourmaline”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.