Earth & SkyGreek → English
Chondrite
/ˈkɒndraɪt/noun
A stony meteorite containing chondrules, the small round grains that formed before the planets.
The Greek roots
χόνδρος
chóndros
grain, groat, gristle
Literally: “grain stone”
Follow a root:χόνδρος4 words
The story of the word
The name comes from those millimetre beads of once-molten silicate, older than any rock on Earth. Chondros in Greek was a hulled grain of barley and also the gristle in a joint, which is why cartilage vocabulary shares it: chondrocyte, chondroitin. Hypochondria belongs to the same family, from the soft region under the rib cartilage where the ancients located gloom.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
chondrulechondrocytechondroitinhypochondria
In a sentence
Most meteorites that reach the ground are ordinary chondrites, dull grey and unremarkable to look at.