Earth & SkyGreek → English
Beryl
/ˈbɛrɪl/noun
The mineral beryllium aluminium silicate, whose coloured varieties include emerald and aquamarine.
The Greek roots
βήρυλλος
bḗryllos
sea-green gemstone
Literally: “beryl, the pale green stone”
Follow a root:βήρυλλος3 words
The story of the word
The Greeks got the stone and the word from India: βήρυλλος goes back through Prakrit to a Dravidian source, most likely the town of Velur, so the Greek stage is a stop on the route and not the origin. Emerald and aquamarine are the same mineral, coloured by traces of chromium and of iron. The German for spectacles, Brille, comes from this stone, because the earliest European lenses were ground from clear beryl before glassmakers could match it.
- How it travelled
- Dravidian → Prakrit → Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
Same family
berylliumberylline
In a sentence
A single beryl crystal from that pegmatite ran to nearly a metre.
The ring was set with a pale beryl the colour of shallow water.