Definitions

Sorry, no definitions found. Check out and contribute to the discussion of this word!

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word plinian.

Examples

  • Hots was like saying a plinian volcanic eruption was a freaking campfire.

    Black Magic Cherry Adair 2010

  • Hots was like saying a plinian volcanic eruption was a freaking campfire.

    Black Magic Cherry Adair 2010

  • Hots was like saying a plinian volcanic eruption was a freaking campfire.

    Black Magic Cherry Adair 2010

  • Pompeii very likely had far fewer people killed in the plinian eruption of Vesuvius than it would have otherwise, if the eruption had taken place a few decades earlier.

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science 2010

  • The types of eruptions that dacite magma produces can vary from lava flows and domes (effusive, passive eruptions) to explosive, plinian-style eruptions - but they are most famous for the explosive eruptions like

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science 2010

  • (late half of the first century to the end of the second century AD) and there was a shitpot of major league eruptions - quite a few plinian and VEI 5-6, at regular intervals.

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • When Vesuvius exploded, (Pliny the Elder) apparently couldn't believe his luck at having an opportunity to witness such a momentous eruption. He climbed to the highest point he could find and watched the ash cloud develop. Later his nephew (Pliny the Younger) recalled how they saw the plume grow into a shape 'like an umbrella pine, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches, I imagine because it was thrust upwards by the first blast and then left unsupported as the pressure subsided.' This classic, umbrella-like shape forms when a volanic ash plume hits winds going sideways in the upper atmosphere and spreads out. We now use the adjective 'plinian' for this type of ash cloud, after the man who first described it.
    Alexandra Witze & Jeff Kanipe, Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World (New York: Island Books, 2015), ch. 3, p. 72, Kindle loc 824

    February 18, 2019