obsidian
a volcanic glass similar in composition to granite, usually dark but transparent in thin pieces, and having a good conchoidal fracture.
Origin of obsidian
1Words Nearby obsidian
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use obsidian in a sentence
The volcanoes would have created fertile soil and plenty of obsidian rock to craft into tools.
Eastern Africa’s oldest human fossils are more ancient than we realized | Kate Baggaley | January 12, 2022 | Popular-ScienceDel Toro’s Nightmare Alley, set in the waning days of the Depression, is neither a remake nor a strict adaptation, but rather a melding of both, its own sleek, obsidian creature.
Bradley Cooper Terrifies in the Dark, Doomed Nightmare Alley | Stephanie Zacharek | December 17, 2021 | TimeRomero Villanueva adds that the ancients might have been in search of obsidian.
What’s in a packrat’s petrified pee? Just a few thousand years of secrets. | Rachel Feltman | August 12, 2021 | Popular-ScienceAmong them are bow and arrow technology, specialized tool forms, the long-distance transport of objects such as marine shells and obsidian, personal ornamentation, the use of pigments, water storage, and art.
How new discoveries in west Africa could rewrite pre-history | Eleanor Scerri | April 17, 2021 | QuartzBased on previous discoveries of items made of obsidian, seashells and other exotic materials at council circles, these structures must have hosted rituals of some kind, says archaeologist Susan Vehik of the University of Oklahoma in Norman.
Drones find signs of a Native American ‘Great Settlement’ beneath a Kansas pasture | Bruce Bower | September 10, 2020 | Science News
“I think the main reason is the availability of information and community groups that the Internet provides,” said obsidian.
Dragonglass: The name accorded to volcanic glass or obsidian.
Around, the floor was composed of solid dark green obsidian, as hard and transparent and sharp as bottle-glass.
The White Man's Foot | Grant AllenAgates, cornelians, obsidian, are also among the products of this nature.
Mexico | Charles Reginald EnockThe creation legend of the Cakchiquels of Guatemala makes much of a mysterious, primeval and animated obsidian stone.
Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 | Andrew LangIn the Melanesian myth, dawn is cut out of the body of night by Qat, armed with a knife of red obsidian.
Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 | Andrew LangThere was obsidian, evidently brought from a distance—de Morgan thinks from Armenia, a thousand miles away.
The New Stone Age in Northern Europe | John M. Tyler
British Dictionary definitions for obsidian
/ (ɒbˈsɪdɪən) /
a dark volcanic glass formed by very rapid solidification of lava: Also called: Iceland agate
Origin of obsidian
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for obsidian
[ ŏb-sĭd′ē-ən ]
A shiny, usually black, volcanic glass. Obsidian forms above ground from lava that is similar in composition to the magma from which granite forms underground, but cools so quickly that minerals do not have a chance to form within it.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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