Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A white to dark green variety of jade, chiefly a metasilicate of iron, calcium, and magnesium.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A tough compact variety of amphibole (tremolite or actinolite), of a leek-green color, often found in rolled pieces: jade. It was formerly worn as a remedy for diseases of the kidneys. See
jade .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Min.) A hard compact mineral, of a dark green color, formerly worn as a remedy for diseases of the kidneys, whence its name; kidney stone; a kind of jade. It varies in color from white to dark green. It is the more common and less valuable variety of jade, the other being jadeite. Large deposits are found in Australia. Called also
nephritic stone . See alsojade .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun mineralogy A
semi-precious stone, one of the two types of stone commonly referred to asjade , (the other beingjadeite ).
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an amphibole mineral consisting of calcium magnesium silicate in monoclinic crystalline form; a source of jade that is less valuable than from jadeite; once believed to cure kidney disorders
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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For instance, there was been found scattered over Europe axes made of varieties of stone known as nephrite and jade.
The Prehistoric World; or, Vanished races Emory Adams Allen
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It is a kind of nephrite or jade, a mineral which usually occurs in talcose or magnesian rocks.
Roman Mosaics Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood Hugh Macmillan
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Bonhams will showcase a jeweled gold and nephrite imperial presentation snuff box, with a diamond-set monogram of Tsar Nicholas II, from circa 1890 estimate: £80,000-£120,000.
Big Things in Little Packages Margaret Studer 2011
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Indeed, the most amusing piece in the collection is Prince Charles's sealing-wax stamp, a Kermit-like green frog carved from Siberian nephrite surmounting, with his left hind leg fully extended, a gold column enameled with pink guilloché the enamel is translucent so you can just make out the geometric pattern incised into the metal beneath it—and in this case looks like moiré silk.
A Palace's Small Treasures Paul Levy 2011
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Lastly for that kind of money I'd want something like fossilized mammoth ivory or slabs of Wyoming nephrite jade for the handle.
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The windows were paned with sheer glass from Aleppo, in shades of jade and nephrite, the cool greens bringing the verdure of the outside inside, the color of the light percolating into the white marble in the chamber, so that it seemed as though Empress Mumtaz Mahal rested, indeed, in the garden of Paradise.
Shadow Princess Indu Sundaresan 2010
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The windows were paned with sheer glass from Aleppo, in shades of jade and nephrite, the cool greens bringing the verdure of the outside inside, the color of the light percolating into the white marble in the chamber, so that it seemed as though Empress Mumtaz Mahal rested, indeed, in the garden of Paradise.
Shadow Princess Indu Sundaresan 2010
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The windows were paned with sheer glass from Aleppo, in shades of jade and nephrite, the cool greens bringing the verdure of the outside inside, the color of the light percolating into the white marble in the chamber, so that it seemed as though Empress Mumtaz Mahal rested, indeed, in the garden of Paradise.
Shadow Princess Indu Sundaresan 2010
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Copper Alloy with gold gilding and polychrome enamel inlays (cloisonné) 14 3/4 x 10 x 7 1/2 inches Asian Art Museum Ornament depicting a lotus pond Green nephrite on a gold mount
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Importantly, a sample that does not consist of either nephrite or jadeite is simply not jade.
Natural Kinds Bird, Alexander 2008
chained_bear commented on the word nephrite
"Khotan was famous for its jade (technically nephrite), large chunks of which the inhabitants found in the riverbeds around the oasis. Khotan's two largest rivers are named the Yurungkash ('White Jade' in Uighur) and the Karakash ('Black Jade'), and they merge north of the city to form the Khotan River. The jade found in the two rivers differs in color, and implements made from the lighter-colored Khotanese jade have been found in a royal tomb, dating to 1200 BCE, in the central Chinese city of Anyang."
--Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2012), 207
January 4, 2017