Aeolianite

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A sedimentary rock that forms from the consolidation of wind-transported sand particles due to natural processes, resulting in a firm geological structure
2. This type of rock emerges through the compaction and cementation of sand grains moved by the wind, reflecting the impact of aeolian forces in its creation
3. A geological formation created when wind-blown sand particles are compacted and cemented, resulting in a durable type of sedimentary rock

Etymology: Robert Wheeler Sayles, an American geologist, coined the term in 1931 in a study of Bermuda's geology, "Bermuda during the ice age." He needed a name for the pale, cross-bedded rock that forms when wind piles up sand dunes and that later hardens into stone. He built it from "aeolian," the adjective for the Greek wind god Aeolus and, in geology, for things moved by wind, and the suffix "-ite," the standard ending for rocks and minerals. The coinage was not immediately settled. Sayles applied the word to any sediment the wind deposited and later lithified, a broad sense. Decades later, the geologists Rhodes Fairbridge and Dorothy Johnson, in their 1978 "Encyclopedia of Sedimentology," narrowed it to dune calcarenite, the limestone-sand rock most often associated with the term in practice.