Earth & SkyGreek → English
Limonite
/ˈlaɪmənaɪt/noun
A rusty brown mixture of hydrated iron oxides, not a single mineral, formed where iron-bearing rock weathers.
The Greek roots
λειμών
leimṓn
wet meadow
Literally: “meadow stone”
Follow a root:λειμών1 word
The story of the word
Johann Hausmann named it in 1813 after λειμών, a wet meadow, because the ore collects in bogs and marsh bottoms where groundwater gives up its iron. Some sources read the name instead from λίμνη, a marsh or lake, and the two are not easy to separate at this distance. Iron Age Europe smelted its first blades from this bog ore, scooped by hand, long before anyone sank a mine.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
In a sentence
The stain on the cliff face is limonite, iron leaching out of the sandstone above.