Earth & SkyGreek → English
Diopside
/daɪˈɒpsaɪd/noun
A calcium magnesium pyroxene mineral, often pale green, sometimes cut as a gemstone.
The Greek roots
δίς
dís
twice
ὄψις
ópsis
view, appearance
Literally: “two views”
The story of the word
Named around 1800 for the two ways the prism zone of the crystal can be oriented, which gives the mineral two aspects to the eye. It forms where limestone is cooked by heat and pressure, so it turns up in marble quarries and skarns; the chrome-bearing green variety from Siberia is sold under its own trade name. Mineralogy's habit of building names out of Greek became so entrenched that a mineral named for neither a Greek description nor a person is the exception.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
opticsynopsisautopsydilemma
In a sentence
A vein of diopside ran green through the white marble.
Chrome diopside is cheap for its colour because the crystals are usually small.