Earth & SkyGreek → English
Chrysotile
/ˈkrɪsətaɪl/noun
A fibrous serpentine mineral, the white asbestos that made up most of the world's asbestos production.
The Greek roots
χρυσός
khrūsós
gold
τίλος
tílos
shred, fibre
Literally: “gold fibre”
The story of the word
Kobell named it in 1834 for the silky golden sheen of the fibres. Each fibre is a rolled tube of silicate sheet, which is why the mineral can be spun and woven like cloth. That workability is exactly what made it an industrial staple and then a public health disaster; chrysotile is banned in more than sixty countries and still mined in others.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
chrysalischrysanthemumchrysolite
In a sentence
The survey found chrysotile lagging on the boiler pipes.
Chrysotile veins run across the serpentinite at right angles.