Aventurine

Quick meaning: Aventurine is a noun meaning A kind of brownish glass containing gold-coloured spangles.

Meaning

A kind of brownish glass containing gold-coloured spangles.

More Meanings

1. (mineralogy, by extension) A variety of translucent quartz, spangled throughout with scales of yellow mica.

Example Sentences

[F]rom out the silken curtain-folds / Bare-footed and bare-headed three fair girls / In gilt and rosy raiment came: their feet / In dewy grasses glisten'd; and the hair / All over glanced with dewdrop or with gem / Like sparkles in the stone Avanturine.

Quartz with spangled inclusions is known as aventurine. The included minerals are scales of shiny mica or hematite. The most familiar aventurine is of a reddish-yellow color and has a coppery sheen. Only small quantities of aventurine have been found in the United States.

During this period of two centuries little colour was employed in the lacquer-work, but much gold was used; and those particular kinds of work in which "clouded" gold effects, avanturines, and tesselated gold are introduced, as well as low-relief modelling of a most perfect kind, were invented and brought to a high state of perfection.

The Sandaresus, an Arabian stone, classed by Pliny [the Elder] among the Carbunculi, seems to have been our Aventurine, for he describes it as full of golden stars shining through a transparent substance, not from the surface, but from within the body of the stone. The true Aventurine, or Goldie-stone, is a brownish semi-transparent quartz, full of specks of yellow mica.

Word Forms

• aventurines
• aventurin

Synonyms for aventurine

Depending on context, synonyms include goldstone, sunstone.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include sunstone, feldspar, glazes, aventurin, avanturine, aventurescence.

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