Definitions

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

  • noun A rock fragment foreign to the igneous mass in which it occurs.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In petrography, a term proposed by Sollas (1894) for a rock inclosed in an intrusive rock, and not derived from the igneous magma.

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

  • noun geology any piece of rock having a different origin to that of the igneous rock in which it is found

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

  • noun (geology) a piece of rock of different origin from the igneous rock in which it is embedded

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Usurped the subtlety, the vulnerability of the egg and ham wedding, the pepper xenolith stood firm, yelled to the other flavors and claimed victory, zero-sum taste diplomacy.

    Tabasco Revenge

  • The odds against one of them getting picked up as a xenolith are probably astronomical.

    Firestorm

  • "Unless one got carried to the surface as a xenolith!"

    Firestorm

  • - This diamond discovery was from a multi-phased xenolith-bearing lamprophyre dyke system, approximately 6 metres wide in its surface exposure.

    Marketwire - Breaking News Releases

  • - A fragment (or xenolith) of well mineralized intrusive within barren granodiorite was observed in drill hole MX07-03; - Disseminated molybdenite has recently been observed in intrusive rocks at the 805 mine level, currently below the Z zone described previously; and, - Strong quartz stockwork with molybdenite in biotite hornfels has been observed adjacent to the Ethel zone (Drill Hole MX07-01).

    FinanzNachrichten.de: Aktuelle Nachrichten

  • - A fragment (or xenolith) of well mineralized intrusive within barren granodiorite was observed in drill hole MX07-03;

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  • - A fragment (or xenolith) of well mineralized intrusive within barren granodiorite was observed in drill hole MX07-03;

    The Earth Times Online Newspaper

  • - A fragment (or xenolith) of well mineralized intrusive within barren granodiorite was observed in drill hole MX07-03;

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  • this strikes me as patently false! known direct samples of the mantle at or near the moho are at slow spreading ridges (where both serpentinite and unhydrous mantle rocks are found) and by xenolith (to my knowledge, no serpentinite xenolith has ever been described).

    At it Again

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