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Webster 1913 Edition

Chert

Chert

(chẽrt)
,
Noun.
[Ir.
ceart
stone, perh. akin to E.
crag
.]
(Min.)
An impure, massive, flintlike quartz or hornstone, of a dull color.

Webster 1828 Edition

Chert

CHERT

,
Noun.
In mineralogy, a subspecies of rhomboidal quartz; called also hornstone, petrosilex or rock flint. It is less hard than common quartz; its fracture usually dull and splintery, sometimes more or less conchoidal. It is more or less translucent, sometimes at the edges, and sometimes the whole mass, if thin, has the strong translucency of certain horns. Its colors are numerous and usually dull. It is usually amorphous, sometimes globular, or in nodules. It occurs often in veins, especially metallic, in primitive mountains.
Chert is also applied to other minerals besides hornstone. Aikin calls a variety of flint, flinty chert, and the Derbyshire miners apply the term, black chert, to a fusible mineral, whereas the hornstone above described is infusible.

Definition 2024

chert

chert

English

Noun

chert ‎(countable and uncountable, plural cherts)

  1. (geology, uncountable) Massive, usually dull-colored and opaque, quartzite, hornstone, impure chalcedony, or other flint-like mineral.
  2. (countable) A flint-like tool made from chert.

Usage notes

Generally, in mineralogy and geology, a chert does not have a conchoidal fracture. In North American archeology the term chert occasionally is still used for various siliceous minerals (including flint) that have a conchoidal fracture; this leads to confusion between the terms flint and chert in some archeology texts.

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Unknown.

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