Earth & SkyGreek → English
Anhydrite
/ænˈhaɪdraɪt/noun
Calcium sulphate without water in its crystal, the dry counterpart of gypsum.
The Greek roots
ἀν-
an-
without
ὕδωρ
hýdōr
water
-ίτης
-ítēs
connected with (mineral suffix)
Literally: “waterless stone”
The story of the word
Werner named it in 1804 for what it lacks. Gypsum is the same salt with two water molecules locked into the structure; anhydrite has none, and given the chance it takes them back and swells by more than half its volume. That swelling has lifted floors, cracked dam foundations and wrecked tunnels through the Swiss Jura, where engineers still budget for it. The same prefix and root sit on every bottle of anhydrous solvent in a laboratory.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1804
Same family
anhydroushydrantdehydratehydrophobia
In a sentence
The borehole went through two hundred metres of anhydrite.
Wet the anhydrite and you get gypsum, plus a great deal of pressure.