Cairn gorm

cairn·gorm

[kairn-gawrm]
noun
smoky quartz.
Also called Cairngorm stone.

Origin:
1785–95; short for Cairngorm stone, i.e., stone from Cairngorm Mountains

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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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World English Dictionary
cairngorm (ˈkɛənˌɡɔːm, ˌkernˈɡɒrm) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide]
 
—n
Also called: smoky quartz a smoky yellow, grey, or brown variety of quartz, used as a gemstone
 
[C18: from Cairn Gorm (literally: blue cairn), mountain in Scotland where it is found]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Cairn gorm is always a great word to know.
So is lollapalooza. Does it mean:
an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.
a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.
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"Once also it was my business to go in search of the relics of a human body, mangled by sharks, which had just been cast up, a week after a wreck, having got the direction from a lighthouse: I should find it a mile or two distant over the sand, a dozen rods from the water, covered with a cloth, by a stick stuck up. I expected that I must look very narrowly to find so small an object, but the sandy beach, half a mile wide, and stretching farther than the eye could reach, was so perfectly smooth and bare, and the mirage toward the sea so magnifying, that when I was half a mile distant the insignificant sliver which marked the spot looked like a bleached spar, and the relics were conspicuous as if they lay in state on that sandy plain, or a generation had labored to pile up their cairn there. Close at hand they were simply some bones with a little flesh adhering to them, in fact only a slight inequality in the sweep of the shore. There was nothing at all remarkable about them, and they were singularly inoffensive both to the senses and the imagination. But as I stood there they grew more and more imposing. They were alone with the beach and the sea, whose hollow roar seemed addressed to them, and I was impressed as if there was an understanding between them and the ocean which necessarily left me out, with my snivelling sympathies. That dead body had taken possession of the shore, and reigned over it as no living one could, in the name of a certain majesty which belonged to it."
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