Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A basic rock whose pockmarked appearance is caused by the presence of numerous white, rounded, embedded spherules.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A rock in which there is a more or less distinctly concretionary arrangement, giving rise to pustular or pea-like forms which are disseminated through a finely crystalline ground-mass, and which, from their resemblance as seen on weathered surfaces to smallpox-pustules, have for hundreds of years made this rock an object of curiosity.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Geol.) A kind of diorite or diabase containing imbedded whitish spherules, which give the rock a spotted appearance.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun geology A kind of
diorite ordiabase with embedded whitishspherules , which give the rock a spotted appearance.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Latin varius various + -lite: compare French variolite.
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Examples
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In the Little Crau, the mouth of the Durance, are found prodigious numbers of green and crystalline rocks, granite and variolite brought down from the Alps of Briançon, but nine-tenths of the pebbles of the Great Crau are white quartz brought from the great chain of the Alps, together with mica-slate and calcareous stones, and only a few of the variolites of Mont Genèvre.
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