Earth & SkyGreek → English
Basalt
/bəˈsɔːlt/noun
A dark, fine-grained volcanic rock that makes up most of the ocean floor.
The Greek roots
βάσανος
básanos
touchstone, test
Literally: “touchstone rock”
Follow a root:βάσανος1 word
The story of the word
Pliny wrote basaltes for a hard dark Egyptian stone, apparently a slip for Greek βασανίτης, the assayer's touchstone that gold was rubbed against to test its purity. Because a false coin could be exposed that way, βάσανος also came to mean an ordeal, and then interrogation under torture. The Greek word is thought to be a borrowing from Egyptian to begin with. When basalt cools slowly it contracts into hexagonal columns, which is what the Giant's Causeway is.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
In a sentence
The whole headland is basalt, black and squared off like masonry.