Definitions

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

  • adjective Of, relating to, or being a surface characterized by smooth, shell-like convexities and concavities, as on fractured obsidian.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In mathematics, pertaining or relating to the conchoid: as, Holm's conchoidal screw.
  • In mineralogy, having convex elevations and concave depressions like shells: applied principally to such a surface produced by fracture, as exemplified in obsidian.

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

  • adjective (Min.) Having elevations or depressions in form like one half of a bivalve shell; -- applied principally to a surface produced by fracture.

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

  • adjective mineralogy Of a type of irregular fracture having planar, concentric curves, like those on a mussel shell. Of a mineral having such a fracture, such as flint.

Etymologies

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

[From Greek konkhoeidēs, mussellike : konkho-, concho- + -oeidēs, -oid.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From conchoid

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Examples

  • This is referred to as conchoidal fracture; glass fractures in the same way.

    Quartz 2008

  • When someone breaks a window the glass shatters in a series of conchoidal breaks—curved fracture lines.

    A Lincoln Rhyme eBook Boxed Set Jeffery Deaver 2001

  • The conchoidal fractures began on the clean side of the glass and ended on the dirty side.

    A Lincoln Rhyme eBook Boxed Set Jeffery Deaver 2001

  • When someone breaks a window the glass shatters in a series of conchoidal breaks — curved fracture lines.

    The Coffin Dancer Deaver, Jeffery 1998

  • The conchoidal fractures began on the clean side of the glass and ended on the dirty side.

    The Coffin Dancer Deaver, Jeffery 1998

  • At ordinary temperatures ebonite is hard and brittle and breaks with a well-marked conchoidal fracture.

    On Laboratory Arts Richard Threlfall

  • The twigs soon become encrusted with a mammelated substance of a red colour more or less deep, nearly transparent, hard, and having a brilliant conchoidal fracture.

    Field's Chromatography or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists George Field

  • The white flakes do not exhibit the true conchoidal fracture in such perfection elsewhere; nor break off in such delicious morsels, edged with delicate brown.

    Acadia or, A Month with the Blue Noses Frederic S. Cozzens

  • This one can see by the traces of conchoidal fracture which they all show.

    Anahuac : or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern Edward Burnett Tylor

  • There were built-up fabrics, called _Charlottes_, caky externally, pulpy within; there were also _marangs_, and likewise custards, -- some of the indolent-fluid sort, others firm, in which every stroke of the teaspoon left a smooth, conchoidal surface like the fracture of chalcedony, with here and there

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860 Various

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