oolite

American  

[oh-uh-lahyt] / ˈoʊ əˌlaɪt /

noun

Geology.

1. a limestone composed of minute rounded concretions resembling fish roe, in some places altered to ironstone by replacement with iron oxide.

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oolite British  

/ ˈəʊəˌlaɪt /

noun

1. any sedimentary rock, esp limestone, consisting of tiny spherical concentric grains within a fine matrix

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oolite Scientific  

/ ō′ə-līt′ /

1. A sedimentary rock consisting of ooliths that are cemented together by calcium carbonate.

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Other Word Forms

• oolitic
  adjective

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Etymology

Origin of oolite

1775–85; (< French oölithe ) < New Latin oölithēs. See oo-, -lite

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

oolite

The font, too, is Perpendicular, an octagonal structure of oolite, with richly ornamented niches on every face, each containing the head of a saint in high relief.

From Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely by Edward Conybeare

The rock is oolite shale of variable hardness, and the average time occupied in drilling holes 5 ft. deep was 12 minutes.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 7 "Drama" to "Dublin" by Various

About a dozen men, with little tables before them, are dispersed over the latter part of the ascent, and keep tempting you with "fossiliferous specimens of the oolite formation," "tertiary," "silurian," "saurian," "stratification," "carboniferous."

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 by Various

Therefore the Hartz, the Cote d'Or, and Mount Pilus of Forez, have risen from the globe since the formation of the Jura oolite, and before the deposit of the three other formations.

From The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 by Robert Walsh

The belemnites are the internal shells of a sort of cuttle-fish which swam about in enormous numbers in the seas whose sediment forms our modern lias, oolite, and gault.

From Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science by Grant Allen

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