Definitions

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

  • noun A gray mineral, essentially PbS, the principal ore of lead.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A remedy or antidote for poison; theriaca. See theriac.
  • noun Native lead sulphid.

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

  • noun (Med.), obsolete A remedy or antidote for poison; theriaca.
  • noun (Min.) Lead sulphide; the principal ore of lead. It is of a bluish gray color and metallic luster, and is cubic in crystallization and cleavage.
  • noun See Blende.

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

  • noun mineralogy A mineral, lead sulphide (PbS), used as an ore for lead.

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

  • noun soft blue-grey mineral; lead sulfide; a major source of lead

Etymologies

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

[Latin galēna, lead ore.]

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Examples

  • a saddle of mutton; second course, a fowl they call galena at head, and a capon larger than some of our Irish turkeys, at foot; third course, four different sorts of ices, pine-apple, grape, raspberry, and a fourth; in each remove there were I think fourteen dishes.

    Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) Edited with notes and Introductory Account of her life and writings Hester Lynch Piozzi 1781

  • The tablets, he discovered, were made of Tunisian lead, suggesting that the Romans were mining a lead ore known as galena in the African colony.

    On Archaeology’s Front Line in Atlanta 2009

  • There's Jeff Bezos on the right and Paul Saville on the left looking for galena, which is the lead-silver thing.

    Stewart Brand on the Long Now Stewart Brand 2004

  • There's Jeff Bezos on the right and Paul Saville on the left looking for galena, which is the lead-silver thing.

    Stewart Brand on the Long Now Stewart Brand 2004

  • There's Jeff Bezos on the right and Paul Saville on the left looking for galena, which is the lead-silver thing.

    Stewart Brand on the Long Now Stewart Brand 2004

  • Clever though they were, they only knew lead when it occurred in the form known as galena, which looked like lead itself, and so they threw out a more valuable ore, cerusite, or lead carbonate, and the heaps of this valuable material were mined over a second time in comparatively recent times.

    From John O'Groats to Land's End Robert Naylor

  • ~ Lead is found in nature chiefly as the sulphide (PbS), called galena; to a much smaller extent it occurs as carbonate, sulphate, chromate, and in a few other forms.

    An Elementary Study of Chemistry William McPherson

  • Silver is found in the ores of other metals, such as fahlerz, which sometimes contains from two to ten per cent. of the metal, and galena, which is an important source of it; in fact, galena is never found entirely free from silver.

    A Text-book of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. Cornelius Beringer 1886

  • The fowls are flamingos, great curlews, and guinea-hens, which the natives of those islands call galena pintata, or the painted hen; but in Jamaica, where I have seen also those birds in the dry savannahs and woods (for they love to run about in such places) they are called guinea-hens.

    A Voyage to New Holland William Dampier 1683

  • The machinery is long gone and water mint, butterwort, dragonflies and frogs flourish in the fenny pools where grey crystals of galena were separated from the spoil, but the shells of the buildings remain.

    Country diary: Westgate, Weardale Phil Gates 2010

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