CALCITE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does calcite mean? 

• CALCITE (noun)
  The noun CALCITE has 1 sense:

1. a common mineral consisting of crystallized calcium carbonate; a major constituent of limestone

  Familiarity information: CALCITE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CALCITE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A common mineral consisting of crystallized calcium carbonate; a major constituent of limestone

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Hypernyms ("calcite" is a kind of...):

spar (any of various nonmetallic minerals (calcite or feldspar) that are light in color and transparent or translucent and cleavable)

Meronyms (substance of "calcite"):

calcium carbonate (a salt found in nature as chalk or calcite or aragonite or limestone)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "calcite"):

alabaster; Mexican onyx; onyx marble; oriental alabaster (a hard compact kind of calcite)

chalk (a soft whitish calcite)

Iceland spar (a transparent calcite found in Iceland and used in polarizing microscopes)

Holonyms ("calcite" is a substance of...):

limestone (a sedimentary rock consisting mainly of calcium that was deposited by the remains of marine animals)

Derivation:

calcitic (of or relating to or containing calcite)

 Context examples 

Vaterite is not very stable in the Earth’s humid atmosphere as it often reverts to more common forms of calcium carbonate, such as calcite.

(Rare mineral discovered in plants for first time, University of Cambridge)

Incorporating carbon in their biomass may help subsurface microbes form calcite, a mineral made of calcium carbonate.

(Major deep carbon sink linked to microbes at volcanic island chains, National Science Foundation)

Further to this, it appears that although many species in this section produced vaterite along with calcite, there was at least one species, Saxifraga sempervivum, that was producing pure vaterite.

(Rare mineral discovered in plants for first time, University of Cambridge)