Definitions

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

  • noun An apple-green chalcedony used as a gemstone.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The ancient name of a golden-green precious stone, now generally believed to have been a variety of the beryl or possibly a green variety of fluor-spar (chlorophane), which possesses the properly of shining in the dark or by the heat of the hand.
  • noun A variety of chalcedony commonly apple-green in color and often extremely beautiful, so that it is much esteemed in jewelry.

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

  • noun (Min.) An apple-green variety of chalcedony, colored by nickel. It has a dull flinty luster, and is sometimes used in jewelry.

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

  • noun mineralogy A variety of light-green translucent quartz.

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

  • noun a green variety of chalcedony valued as a gemstone

Etymologies

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

[Middle English crisopase, from Old French crisopras, from Latin chrȳsoprasus, from Greek khrūsoprasos : khrūso-, chryso- + prason, leek.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • Wow. This is one beautiful word! And the meaning's not bad either.

    I think most words with "chryso-" in them are quite pleasing, and it isn't necessarily because of the sound--because "crisso" is not as pleasant.

    October 18, 2007

  • The most dangerous troll in Ankh-Morpork.

    February 8, 2012

  • "Sometimes they made islands or great mountains enclosing lakes of deep turquoise-blue, or liquid amber, or chrysoprase-green; sometimes dark headlands jutted into strange, lost seas; sometimes slender strips of wonderful lands joined other wonderful lands together."

    A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

    June 28, 2020