Definitions

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

  • noun A titanium accessory mineral in some granite and metamorphic rocks, CaTiSiO5, occurring in usually small brown or yellow crystals and sometimes used as a gemstone.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The mineral titanite.

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

  • noun (Min.) A mineral found usually in thin, wedge-shaped crystals of a yellow or green to black color. It is a silicate of titanium and calcium; titanite.

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

  • noun mineralogy titanite

Etymologies

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

[French sphène, from Greek sphēn, wedge.]

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Examples

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  • A titanium accessory mineral in some granitic and metamorphic rocks, CaTiSiO5, occurring in usually small brown or yellow crystals and sometimes used as a gemstone. Also called titanite.

    (French sphène, from Greek sphēn, wedge.)

    The crystals I have observed were very small and yellow-brown to root-beer colored, and required a 6X-10X hand-lens or jewelers' loop to clearly discern among the fine-grained quartz, feldspar, and micaceous crystals on hand-samples of the stone. Good examples are to be found in the grano-diorite rocks of the canyon east of Salt Lake City, UT, USA where the LDS church's geneology and records vaults are located in vast repositories mined into native rock of the mountains rising behind SLC.

    December 31, 2008