rock crystal

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English

Rock crystal in its natural state
A rock crystal vessel (Greek, 4th-3rd century BCE)

Noun

rock crystal (countable and uncountable, plural rock crystals)

  1. clear, colourless form of the silica-based mineral quartz, often called "pure quartz" or "clear quartz".
    • 1664, Robert Boyle, chapter 1, in Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours‎, London: Henry Herringman, page 114:
      […] I have for Trials sake taken Lumps of Rock Crystal, and Heating them Red hot in a Crucible, I found according to my Expectation, that being Quench’d in Fair water, even those that remain’d in seemingly entire Lumps, exchang’d their Translucency for Whiteness […]
    • 1718, Joseph Addison, Remarks on Several Part of Italy‎, London: J. Tonson, pages 22–23:
      […] I saw his Body, in Episcopal Robes, lying upon the Altar in a Shrine of Rock-Crystal.
    • 1895, H. G. Wells, chapter 1, in The Time Machine‎, New York: Henry Holt, page 24:
      […] there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal.
    • 1945, Evelyn Waugh, chapter 5, in Brideshead Revisited‎, Boston: Little, Brown, page 131:
      I wondered whether I ought to speak to Brideshead, but that grim, rock-crystal mask forbade all confidence.
    • 2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall‎, London: Fourth Estate, Part 4, Chapter 1, p. 296:
      At New Year he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal.

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