Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Containing or resembling silica, or having its general character.
  • In zoology, containing or consisting of silica or silicious substance in one or another form: as, silicious sponges; silicious sponge-spicules; the silicious test or skeleton of various protozoans, especially radiolarians.

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

  • adjective See siliceous.

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

  • adjective Alternative spelling of siliceous.

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

  • adjective relating to or containing or resembling silica

Etymologies

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Examples

  • These creatures, to judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons almost like those of the silicious sponges and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets.

    The War of The Worlds H. G. Wells 2009

  • The gray stones have eroded from the silicious shale that outcrops at the beach.

    Random Beach Art 2006

  • These creatures, to judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons

    The War of the Worlds Herbert George 2006

  • The gray stones have eroded from the silicious shale that outcrops at the beach.

    Archive 2006-03-01 2006

  • This, and broad horizontal strata of trap, sometimes a hundred miles in extent, and each layer having an inch or so of black silicious matter on it, as if it had floated there while in a state of fusion, form a great part of the bottom of the central valley.

    Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa 2004

  • The rock is compact silicious schist of a slightly reddish color, and in thin strata; the island on which we slept looks as if torn off from the opposite side of the gorge, for the strata are twisted and torn in every direction.

    Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa 2004

  • In the silicious matter which the water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue.

    Walden 2004

  • These accidents must always be expected, where spare carriages are placed for months upon sidings to become tinder in the sun; and where the cracks and crevices of the woodwork fill up with the silicious sand of the Desert, an admirable succedaneum for flint and steel.

    The Land of Midian 2003

  • The sea in places washed over slabs of the fine old conglomerates which, in this country, line the banks and soles of all the greater Wadys: these are the Cascalho of the Brazil, a rock which is treated by rejecting the pebbles and by pounding the silicious paste.

    The Land of Midian 2003

  • The material is the normal silicious gravel-grit, traversed and cloisonné by dykes of harder stone.

    The Land of Midian 2003

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