Earth & SkyGreek → English
Cassiterite
/kəˈsɪtəraɪt/noun
Tin dioxide, the only ore from which tin has ever been mined in quantity.
The Greek roots
κασσίτερος
kassíteros
tin
Literally: “tin stone”
Follow a root:κασσίτερος1 word
The story of the word
Herodotus wrote about the Κασσιτερίδες, the Tin Islands somewhere off the northwest of Europe, and admitted he could not say where they were; Cornwall is the usual guess. The Greek word is not native and may have come in along the trade route from the east, tracking the metal itself. Tin is what turns copper into bronze, so a dull brown crystal underwrites an entire age.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
In a sentence
The streams below the granite still carry cassiterite, which is how the deposits were found.