calamite

American  

[kal-uh-mahyt] / ˈkæl əˌmaɪt /

noun

1. any fossil plant of the genus Calamites and related genera of the Carboniferous Period, resembling oversized horsetails and constituting much of the coal used as fuel.

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calamite British  

/ ˈkæləˌmaɪt /

noun

1. any extinct treelike plant of the genus Calamites, of Carboniferous times, related to the horsetails

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Other Word Forms

• calamitean adjective
• calamitoid adjective

Etymology

Origin of calamite

1745–55; < New Latin Calamites the genus name, Latin calamītēs < Greek kalamī́tēs reedlike. See calamus, -ite ¹

Example Sentences

Klaproth adds that he entirely agrees with the learned Jesuit, but maintains that the word calamite, to designate the little green frog, called to-day le graisset, la raine, or la rainette, is essentially Greek.

From Project Gutenberg

He had lately obtained a specimen of calamite with the bark on which showed a nucleal cellular pith, surrounded by canals running lengthwise down the stem; outside of these canals wedges of true vascular structure; and lastly, a cellular bark.

From Project Gutenberg

In no other age did the world ever witness such a flora: the youth of the earth was peculiarly a green and umbrageous youth,—a youth of dusk and tangled forests, of huge pines and stately araucarians, of the reed-like calamite, the tall tree-fern, the sculptured sigillaria, and the hirsute lepidodendron.

From Project Gutenberg

In its lowest fossiliferous beds we detect a Lycopodite which not a little resembles one of the commonest of our club mosses,—Lycopodium clavatum,—with a minute fern and a large striated plant resembling a calamite, and evidently allied to an existing genus of Acrogens, the equisetaceæ.

From Project Gutenberg

Mr. Duncan, after next referring to the remains of what he deems a land plant, derived from the same deposit, and which, though sadly mutilated, presents not a little of the appearance of the naked framework of a frond of Cyclopterus Hibernicus divested of the leaflets, goes on to describe the apparent calamite of the formation.

From Project Gutenberg