apatite
Meanings
noun
- A calcium fluoride phosphate of variable composition, sometimes used in the manufacture of fertilizer, as a gemstone, and (in powdered form) as a pigment, and also produced biologically in bones and teeth.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From international scientific vocabulary, from German Apatit (“apatite”). Apatit was coined by the German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749–1817), as follows: Ancient Greek ᾰ̓πᾰ́τη (ăpắtē, “deceit, fraud”) (as it is often mistaken for other minerals) + German -it (suffix forming nouns denoting minerals or rocks; cognate with English -ite); the German word was first used in a 1786 book. Regarding minerals that were named for being deceptive and thus confused with others, compare also fool's gold.
Derived words
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.