Tourmaline

Definition: Tourmaline

Tourmaline

Noun

1. A mineral that is a complex borosilicate and hydroxide of aluminum containing iron and magnesium and calcium and lithium and sodium; it is usually black but occurs in transparent colored forms that are used as gemstones.

Date "tourmaline" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1904. (references)

Etymology: Tourmaline \Tour"ma*line\, noun. [French expression tourmaline, compare to Italian expression turmalina, tormalina, New Latin turmalina, turmalinus; all from tournamal, name given to this stone in Ceylon.]. (Websters 1913)

Specialty Definition: Tourmaline

Domain	Definition
Industry	A semiprecious mineral occuring crystallized and used as a gem. A black variety called schorl is the most common, rubellite is a pinkish or red variety. Source: European Union. (references)
Mining	A. Any member of the trigonal mineral group, XY3 Z6 (BO (sub 3) )3 Si6 O18 (OH,F)4 where X is Na partially replaced by Ca, K, Mg, or a vacancy, Y is Mg, Fe2+ , Li, or Al, and Z is Al and Fe3+ ; forms prisms of three, six, or nine sides; commonly vertically striated; varicolored; an accessory in granite pegmatites, felsic igneous rocks, and metamorphic rocks. Transparent and flawless crystals may be cut for gems. b. The mineral group buergerite, dravite, elbaite, ferridravite,liddicoatite, schorl, and uvite. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Tourmaline

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The mineral tourmaline is a complex silicate of aluminium and boron, but because of isomorphous replacements (solid solution) it varies widely in composition with iron, magnesium and lithium also entering into the combination to a greater or lesser extent. Tourmaline belongs to the hexagonal crystal system, and oftentimes occurs as long, slender, prismatic acicular crystals that are usually terminated with three faces of a rhombohedron. The smaller crystals are often found in a radial pattern, and collumnar masses are common. The prisms are usually three, six, or nine sided with heavy vertical striations producing a rounded effect. Tourmaline is essentially without cleavage, its fracture is conchoidal to even, its hardness is 7-7.5, its specific gravity is 2.9-3.2, and it has a vitreous lustre inclining to resinous.

Bi-colored tourmaline crystal,
0.8 inches long (2 cm).
Larger version

Tourmaline has a wide variety of colors. Common tourmaline can be black, bluish-black, brown, blue, green, red or pink; transparent varieties can be colourless (rare), various shades of rose or pink, greens, blues and brown. Bi-colored crystals are common and can be green at one end and pink at the other, or green on the outside and pink within, which is very attractive in the case of transparent tourmalines.

The opaque black tourmalines were originally called schorl, a term which was applied to all tourmalines until 1703 when the word tourmaline was introduced as a corruption of the Ceylonese word turamali. The origin of the word schorl is not known but could be Scandanavian.

Other names for tourmalines:

Dravite subgroup:
- Brown - dravite (from the Drave district of Carinthia)
Schorl subgroup:
- Black - schorl
Elbaite subgroup:
- Rose or pink - rubellite (from ruby)
- Dark blue - indicolite (from indigo)
- Light blue - Brazillian sapphire
- Green - verdelite or Brazillian emerald
- Colorless - achroite (from the Greek for "colorless")

Small tourmalines are found in granite and some gneisses. Due to the mineralizing action of magmatic vapors, tourmaline is found particularly well-developed in pegmatites and as a contact metamorphorphic mineral.

Synonyms within Context: Tourmaline

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Jewelry	Diamond, brilliant, rock; beryl, emerald; chalcedony, agate, heliotrope; girasol, girasole; onyx, plasma; sard, sardonyx; garnet, lapis lazuli, opal, peridot, tourmaline, chrysolite; sapphire, ruby, synthetic ruby; spinel, spinelle; balais; oriental, oriental topaz; turquois, turquoise; zircon, cubic zirconia; jacinth, hyacinth, carbuncle, amethyst; alexandrite, cat's eye, bloodstone, hematite, jasper, moonstone, sunstone.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

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Crosswords: Tourmaline

English words defined with "tourmaline": Indicolite ♦ Luxullianite ♦ Polarizer, Positive crystals, pyroelectricity ♦ Rubellite ♦ Sagenitic, Schorl ♦ Turmaline. (references)

Specialty definitions using "tourmaline": achroite, ash drawers ♦ blue schorl ♦ chameleonite, chatoyancy, chrome tourmaline ♦ fibrous structure, frictional electricity ♦ greisenization ♦ jetstone ♦ marundite, Mesa Grande tourmaline ♦ pleochroic haloes, precious tourmaline ♦ raspberry spar ♦ scheteligite, schorl rock, schorlite, sondalite ♦ tourmalinization, tsilaisite ♦ uvite. (references)

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Commercial Usage: Tourmaline

Domain	Title
Books	Tessy and the Lost Tourmaline Mine (reference) The Tourmaline Group (reference) Tourmaline (reference) Tourmaline II (reference) Trouble in Tourmaline (Silhouette Special Edition, No. 1464) (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Non-Fiction Usage: Tourmaline

Subject	Topic	Quote
Economic History	Malawi	Natural resources: Limestone, uranium (potential), coal, bauxite, phosphates, graphite, granite, black granite, vermi lite, aquamarine, tourmaline, rubies, sapphires, rare earths. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

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Usage Frequency: Tourmaline

"Tourmaline" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 80.00% of the time. "Tourmaline" is used about 5 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (singular)	80%	4	175,879
Lexical Verb (base form)	20%	1	339,140
Total	100.00%	5	N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expressions: Tourmaline

Hypenated Usage
	Ending with "tourmaline": quartz-tourmaline.
	Containing "tourmaline": quartz-tourmaline-sulphide.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Tourmaline

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Expression	Frequency per Day	Expression	Frequency per Day
tourmaline	212	blue facet rough tourmaline	4
pink tourmaline	89	ring tourmaline watermelon	4
watermelon tourmaline	26	jewelry maine tourmaline	4
pink tourmaline crystal	25	pink tourmaline bracelet	4
pink tourmaline ring	19	diamond pink ring tourmaline	3
green tourmaline	19	red tourmaline	3
paraiba tourmaline	19	heat tourmaline treatment	3
maine tourmaline	17	green tourmaline ring	3
black tourmaline	15	pink tourmaline jewelry	3
tourmaline jewelry	14	tourmaline gem stone	3
tourmaline ring	14	bead tourmaline wholesale	3
mining tourmaline	14	tourmaline pendant	3
tourmaline bead	13	pendant tourmaline watermelon	2
blue tourmaline	9	chrome tourmaline	2
indicolite tourmaline	7	black pendant tourmaline	2
pink tourmaline earring	7	crystal green pendant silver tourmaline	2
tourmaline crystal	6	beryl tourmaline	2
tourmaline necklace	5	pariba tourmaline	2
tourmaline stone	5	black earring tourmaline	2
watermelon tourmaline jewelry	5	black tourmaline jewelry	2
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translation: Tourmaline

Language		Translations for "tourmaline"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Albanian		turmalinë (tourmalin). (various references)

Bulgarian		турмалин (tourmalin). (various references)

Danish		turmalin (turmaline). (various references)

Dutch		toermalijn (turmaline). (various references)

French		tourmaline. (various references)

German		Turmalin (turmaline). (various references)

Greek		είδοσ πολύτιμου λίθου, τουρμαλίνης (turmaline). (various references)

Hungarian		turmalin (tourmalin). (various references)

Italian		tormalina (turmaline). (various references)

Pig Latin		ourmalinetay

Portuguese		turmalina (turmaline). (various references)

Russian		турмалин (tourmalin). (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		turmalin (tourmalin). (various references)

Spanish		turmalina (turmaline). (various references)

Swedish		turmalin. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Ancestral Language Translations: Tourmaline

Language	Period	Translations
Latin	500 BCE-Modern	ligyrius. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

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Derivations & Misspellings: Tourmaline

Derivations
	Words beginning with "tourmaline": tourmalines. (additional references)
Misspellings
	"Tourmaline" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Toamasina, Toralien, Tormain, tormaline, tourain. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Rhyming with "Tourmaline"

# of Phoneme Matches	Pronunciation	Word(s) rhyming with "tourmaline" (pronounced tuh"rmulē'n)
4	-u l ē' n	acetylene, aniline, ethylene, gasoline, Magdalene, mescaline, methylene, naphthalene, opaline, polyethylene, polypropylene.
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

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Anagrams: Tourmaline

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-e-i-l-m-n-o-r-t-u"
	-1 letter: emulation.
	-2 letters: amitrole, auntlier, emulator, oriental, outlearn, outliner, relation, retinula, rolamite, routeman, ruminate, tenurial, terminal, tramline.
	-3 letters: aileron, ailment, aleuron, alienor, aliment, almoner, alumine, alunite, amniote, automen, elation, elution, enamour, latrine, loamier, lomenta, maltier, manitou, manlier, marline, marlite, minaret, mineral, minuter, moraine, morulae, motlier, moulter, mounter, muriate, natrium, neuroma, neutral, numeral, omental, outearn.
	Words containing the letters "a-e-i-l-m-n-o-r-t-u"
	+1 letter: tourmalines.
	+2 letters: counterclaim, unmoralities.
	+3 letters: counterclaims, documentarily, importunately, intercommunal, multiregional, perambulation, permutational, reformulating, reformulation, restimulation, somersaulting, troublemaking, unproblematic, vermiculation.
	+4 letters: counterclaimed, insurmountable, intermolecular, intramolecular, macroevolution, osmoregulation, perambulations, preformulating, reformulations, restimulations, subnormalities, supernormality, troublemakings, ultramodernist, vermiculations.
	+5 letters: counterclaiming, deuteranomalies, intermodulation, macroevolutions, mouthwateringly, neuroanatomical, noninstrumental, nonmatriculated, osmoregulations, overstimulating, overstimulation, ultramodernists, uncomplimentary, uninformatively, unsportsmanlike.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.