tourmaline

UK/ˈtʊɚ.mə.lɪn/US/ˈtʊɚ.mə.lɪn/

nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans written

Other forms: tourmalines

Tourmaline is a crystal that comes in many colours. A tourmaline ring.

One crystal can be pink at one end and green at the other, which is unusual in any mineral. Tourmaline becomes electrically charged when heated, which is how it was first noticed in Europe.

Definitions of tourmaline

1nountourmalineA crystal that comes in many colours.C2
“The tourmaline in that case ran from black to clear pink.”

tourmaline is a mineral.

Where it comes from

French tourmaline comes through Dutch traders from a Sinhalese word for carnelian.

si
තෝරමල්ලී — carnelian
French
tourmaline
English, today
tourmaline

From French tourmaline, ultimately from si තෝරමල්ලී (“carnelian”)

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

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tourmaline in the wild

Elbaite, a sodium, lithium, aluminium boro-silicate, with the chemical composition Na(Li1.5Al1.5)Al6Si6O18(BO3)3(OH)4, is a mineral species belonging to the six-member ring cyclosilicate tourmaline group.
Elbaite
As a gemstone, elbaite is a desirable member of the tourmaline group because of the variety and depth of its colours and quality of the crystals.
Elbaite
Jargoon and tourmaline, when cut as gems, are sometimes mistaken for each other, but the specific gravity is distinctive, since tourmaline is only 3.103.
Jargoon
Moreover, in tourmaline the dichroism is strongly marked, whereas in jargoon it is feeble.
Jargoon
The tourmaline sunangel (Heliangelus exortis) is a species of hummingbird in the "coquettes", tribe Lesbiini of subfamily Lesbiinae.
Tourmaline sunangel

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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