Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A false, deceptive, or irregular form.
- noun A mineral that has the crystalline form of another mineral rather than the form normally characteristic of its own composition.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A deceptive, irregular, or false form; specifically, in mineralogy, a mineral having a definite form belonging, not to the substance of which it consists, but to some other substance which has wholly or partially disappeared.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An irregular or deceptive form.
- noun (Crystallog.) A pseudomorphous crystal, such as a crystal consisting of quartz, but having the cubic form of fluor spar, the fluor crystal having been changed to quartz by a process of substitution.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun geology, mineralogy A
mineral that formed byreplacement of an existing mineral (ororganic matter) such that the new mineral has theappearance anddimensions of the original.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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It is then called a pseudomorph, which is a term applied to any mineral which, instead of having the form it should possess, shows the form of something which has altered its structure completely, and then disappeared.
The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones John Mastin
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So would you consider mineral replacement like a malachite pseudomorph after calcite to fit the preference to photographs that depict “invasive species.”
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So would you consider mineral replacement like a malachite pseudomorph after calcite to fit the preference to photographs that depict “invasive species.”
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It will help to mesh awarenesses with a human, Djana ¦ no terrified captive, no lickspittle turncoat, no sniveler about peace and brotherhood, no pseudomorph grown up among us apart from his own breed ¦ but one who has come to me freely, out of the depths of the commonalty that bred her, one who has known alike the glory and the tragedy of being human.
A Circus of Hells Anderson, Poul, 1926- 1969
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For instance: very often, in a certain cavity, fluorspar has existed originally, but, through some chemical means, has been slowly changed to quartz, so that, as crystals cannot be changed in shape, we find quartz existing -- undeniably quartz -- yet possessing the crystals of fluorspar; therefore the quartz becomes a pseudomorph, the condition being an example of what is termed pseudomorphism.
The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones John Mastin
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Hawksnest, over beyond, I noted, had its pseudomorph too; a newspaper proprietor of the type that hustles along with stolen ideas from one loud sink-or-swim enterprise to another, had bought the place outright; Redgrave was in the hands of brewers.
Tono Bungay 1906
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I conceive it as a mechanism set going by heat -- as a sort of active crystal with the capacity of giving rise to a great number of pseudomorphs; and I conceive that external conditions favour one or the other pseudomorph, but leave the fundamental mechanism untouched.
Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 2 Thomas Henry Huxley 1860
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It'll make that pseudomorph page just sing , I'm sure.
Gizmodo Mat Honan 2011
treeseed commented on the word pseudomorph
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Pronunciation: \ˈsü-də-ˌmȯrf\
Function: noun
Etymology: probably from French pseudomorphe, from pseud- + -morphe -morph
Date: 1849
1 : a mineral having the characteristic outward form of another species
2 : a deceptive or irregular form
February 14, 2008