Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A very compact silicious rock, differing but little from flint.

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

  • noun (Min.) A siliceous stone, a variety of quartz, closely resembling flint, but more brittle; -- called also chert.

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

  • noun hornfels

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

  • noun a fine-grained metamorphic rock formed by the action of heat on clay rocks

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

horn +‎ stone, translation of hornfels.

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Examples

  • Chert is sometimes called hornstone; also the term chert is often applied to any impure flinty rock, including jaspers.

    Tseh So, a Small House Ruin, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico : 1937

  • "hornstone" type, with porphyritic developments of silicate minerals.

    The Economic Aspect of Geology 1915

  • These hills are of limestone, and rounded, resting upon others of hornstone and jasper.

    Himalayan Journals — Complete 1864

  • The flat slabs were generally of slate or hornstone; but many of them, and all the larger ones, were of syenitic granite, split by heat and cold water with great art.

    Himalayan Journals — Complete 1864

  • By the banks of a deep gully here the rocks are well exposed: they consist of soft clay shales resting on the limestone, which is nearly horizontal; and this again, unconformably on the quartz and hornstone rocks, which are confused, and tilted up at all angles.

    Himalayan Journals — Complete 1864

  • Following up the stream I came to some rapids, where the stream is crossed by large beds of hornstone and porphyry rocks, excessively hard, and pitched up at right angles, or with a bold dip to the north.

    Himalayan Journals — Complete 1864

  • The hills are hornstone and quartz, stratified and dipping southerly with a very high angle; they are very barren, and evidently identical with those on the south bank of the Soane; skirting, in both cases, the granite and gneiss range of Paras-nath.

    Himalayan Journals — Complete 1864

  • In the bed of the river, whose waters are beautifully clear, are hornstone rocks, dipping north-east, and striking north-west.

    Himalayan Journals — Complete 1864

  • During a ride to a natural tank amongst these rocky elevations, I passed from the alluvium to the sandstone, and at once met with all the prevailing plants of the granite, gneiss, limestone and hornstone rocks previously examined, and which I have enumerated too often to require recapitulation; a convincing proof that the mechanical properties and not the chemical constitution of the rocks regulate the distribution of these plants.

    Himalayan Journals — Complete 1864

  • On the banks I observed much granite, with large mica crystals, hornstone, tourmaline, and stratified quartz, with granite veins parallel to the foliation or lamination.

    Himalayan Journals — Complete 1864

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