Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A variety of silica that contains microcrystalline quartz.
- noun A siliceous rock of chalcedonic or opaline silica occurring in limestone.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A cryptocrystalline variety of quartz, also called hornstone, petrosilex, or rock-flint.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Min.) An impure, massive, flintlike quartz or hornstone, of a dull color.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun geology, uncountable Massive, usually dull-colored and opaque,
quartzite , hornstone, impurechalcedony , or otherflint -like mineral. - noun countable A
flint -liketool made from chert.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun variety of silica containing microcrystalline quartz
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The Lake Superior iron formations now consist near the surface mainly of interbanded quartz (or chert) and hematite, called _jasper_ or _ferruginous chert_ or _taconite_.
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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
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And why I have begun this column with what seems like a chain of free association is something that will probably become only marginally clear to you when I tell you that it was triggered by the news, last year, of the discovery at the Natural History Museum in London of the oldest known insect fossil, embedded in a chunk of a crystalline rock from Rhynie, S.otland known as chert -- a fossil that dates from the very same S.lurian period, four hundred million years back, that saw the flourishing of the eurypterids that T.S. Eliot's "ragged claws" line unaccountably calls to my mind.
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When all you have is a knife (only carbon blades work; stainless is too hard), you may be able to get a spark by striking its back with a sharp stone chip, such as chert or flint.
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We don't use the kind of chert that we used to because we don't have the type of chert roads, but this will work out better because it will cut our costs down. "
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We don't use the kind of chert that we used to because we don't have the type of chert roads, but this will work out better because it will cut our costs down. "
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We don't use the kind of chert that we used to because we don't have the type of chert roads, but this will work out better because it will cut our costs down. "
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We don't use the kind of chert that we used to because we don't have the type of chert roads, but this will work out better because it will cut our costs down. "
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We don't use the kind of chert that we used to because we don't have the type of chert roads, but this will work out better because it will cut our costs down. "
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We don't use the kind of chert that we used to because we don't have the type of chert roads, but this will work out better because it will cut our costs down. "
treeseed commented on the word chert
"Climb a long tall hick'ry
Bend it over, "skinnin' cats."
Playin' baseball with chert rocks
Usin' sawmill slabs for bats"
_excerpt of lyrics from Mountain Music by Randy Owen of the band Alabama
February 4, 2008
yarb commented on the word chert
Ubi sunt the blue-green algae of yesteryear that by photosynthesis first oxygenated the atmosphere? In the black cherts of the Bulawayan Limestone Group dated at about three thousand one hundred million years old, in the stromatolitic sediments first noted by Macgregor, later corroborated by Schopf et al; that is where.
- Peter Reading, C, 1984
August 2, 2008
bilby commented on the word chert
"Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers."
- David Foster Wallace, 'The Pale King'.
April 5, 2011