Definitions

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

  • noun A colorless or white mineral, NaCl, occurring as cubic crystals and found in dried lakebeds in arid climates, mined or gathered for use as table salt.
  • noun Rock salt.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In mineralogy, native rock-salt.

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

  • noun (Min.) Native salt; sodium chloride.

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

  • noun mineralogy Native salt; sodium chloride NaCl as a mineral; rock salt.

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

  • noun naturally occurring crystalline sodium chloride

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The formal mineral name for crystalline sodium chloride is halite, derived from the Greek word hals meaning salt.

    Halite 2008

  • Evaporite minerals such as halite (sodium chloride, or table salt) and gypsum produce the white deposits.

    NASA Earth Observatory 2008

  • Somniloquies rise like the drowned their lungfuls of air ripple as indecipherable a vision translucent as halite in opaque huelessness the night of it meandering breath is the sea rote I float to the pupil wade the green iris shut in its eyelid these thoughts dream me and not I them how from out of silence clarities swim

    The Night Shore Raymond Gibson 2011

  • Pure halite is colorless, though it is often colored by impurities.

    Halite 2008

  • By dating the halite, Zolensky's team found the water trapped inside it formed at least 4.5 billion years ago, back when most scientists believe our solar system was born.

    Ancient Water From Afar 2008

  • Some industrial minerals are used as sources of important chemicals (e.g. halite for sodium chloride and borax for borates).

    AP Environmental Science Chapter 10- Minerals 2008

  • This deposit consists of thick, extensive beds of trona and thin trona beds inter-bedded with salt (halite).

    Soda ash or Trona 2008

  • This allows halite to be useful in such varied applications as cooking, food preservation, and chemical production.

    Halite 2008

  • Even more curious were the hundreds of tiny bubbles suspended in the halite crystals.

    Ancient Water From Afar 2008

  • The scientists were intrigued to find vivid purple crystals of halite inside the meteorite, since halite is a salt mineral usually formed from liquid water.

    Ancient Water From Afar 2008

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