Lord Dufferin left me with more words to look up than I have encountered in several—most--all— this year.
His book, Letters from the High Latitudes, has a lot of geological words plus ice and rocks. We’ll see….
schist noun :Geology a coarse-grained metamorphic rock which consists of layers of different minerals and can be split into thin irregular plates. DERIVATIVES schistous adjective ORIGIN late 18th century: from French schiste, via Latin from Greek skhistos ‘split’, from the base of skhizein ‘cleave’.
si·li·ceous| (also silicious) adjective, containing or consisting of silica: siliceous limestone | siliceous sediments.
a·myg·da·loid adjective technical shaped like an almond. noun Anatomy another term for amygdala.
porphyry noun (plural porphyries): a hard igneous rock containing crystals, usually of feldspar, in a fine-grained, typically reddish groundmass. ORIGINlate Middle English: via medieval Latin from Greek porphuritēs, from porphura ‘purple’.
surturbrand definition is - a variety of lignite in Iceland and the Faeroes occurring in seams between beds of volcanic rock.
More to come…