tourmaline

English

Bi-colored tourmaline crystal, 2 cm long.

Etymology

From French tourmaline, ultimately from Sinhalese තෝරමල්ලී (tōramallī, “carnelian”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈtʊɚ.mə.lɪn/, /ˈtʊɚ.məˌlin/

Noun

tourmaline (countable and uncountable, plural tourmalines)

1. (mineralogy) A complex black or dark-coloured borosilicate mineral, compounded with various chemical elements and considered a semi-precious stone.
   • 1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros‎^[1], London: Jonathan Cape, page 3:

     The floor of the chamber was tesselated, of marble and green tourmaline, and on every square of tourmaline was carven the image of a fish: as the dolphin, the conger, the cat-fish, the salmon, the tunny, the squid, and other wonders of the deep.

   • 2012 March, Lee A. Groat, “Gemstones”, in American Scientist‎^[2], volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 14 June 2012, page 128:

     Although there are dozens of different types of gems, among the best known and most important are […] . (Common gem materials not addressed in this article include amber, amethyst, chalcedony, garnet, lazurite, malachite, opals, peridot, rhodonite, spinel, tourmaline, turquoise and zircon.)

2. A transparent gemstone cut from it.

Hyponyms

• blue tourmaline
• canary tourmaline
• chrome tourmaline
• dravite
• green tourmaline
• indicolite
• indigolite
• multicolored tourmaline
• Paraiba tourmaline
• rubellite
• schorl
• shocking pink tourmaline
• watermelon tourmaline
• yellow tourmaline

Related terms

• luxulyanite
• Mohrenkopf

Translations

both senses

• Armenian: տուրմալին (hy) (turmalin)
• Azerbaijani: turmalin
• Catalan: turmalina f
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 電氣石 / 电气石 (din⁶ hei³ sek⁶)

  Mandarin: 電氣石 / 电气石 (zh) (diànqìshí), 托瑪琳 / 托玛琳 (tuōmǎlín)

  Wu: 電氣石 / 电气石

• Czech: turmalín m
• Dutch: toermalijn (nl) m
• Finnish: turmaliini (fi)
• French: tourmaline (fr)
• Galician: turmalina f
• German: Turmalin (de) m
• Greek: Τουρμαλίνης (Tourmalínis)
• Hindi: तुरमली (turamlī), वैक्रांत (hi) (vaikrānt)
• Hungarian: turmalin (hu)
• Italian: tormalina f
• Japanese: トルマリン (torumarin), 電気石 (でんきせき, denkiseki)
• Kazakh: турмалин (turmalin)
• Korean: 전기석(電氣石) (jeon'giseok)
• Kyrgyz: турмалин (turmalin)
• Malayalam: ടൂർമലിൻ (ṭūṟmaliṉ)
• Persian: ترمالین (tormâlin)
• Portuguese: turmalina (pt)
• Romanian: turmalină (ro) f
• Russian: турмали́н (ru) m (turmalín)
• Sinhalese: තෝරමල්ලි (tōramalli)
• Spanish: turmalina (es) f
• Swedish: turmalin c, askblåsare c

Anagrams

• moluranite

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tuʁ.ma.lin/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

tourmaline f (plural tourmalines)

1. tourmaline

Further reading

• “tourmaline”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.