Batholiths

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A large mass of intrusive igneous rock that has cooled and solidified deep within the Earth's crust
2. A significant geological formation composed of rock that has crystallized from molten magma below the surface
3. A substantial, often dome-shaped, rock structure formed by the slow cooling of magma, resulting in coarse-grained textures

Etymology: Batholith is built from two Greek elements: "bathos," meaning "depth," and "lithos," meaning "stone." The name was coined in 1895 by the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess, who needed a term for the huge bodies of granite he had seen exposed across the world's mountain ranges and that he believed had risen from great depths. The word was a deliberate invention, not an ancient term that had drifted into geology. The Greek "bathos" is the same root that gives English "bathysphere" and "abyss"-type ideas of great depth, and it is also the source of the English word for a sudden drop from the sublime to the ridiculous, a sense that came from a satirical essay by Alexander Pope in 1727 and reflects the idea of falling downward. Suess's coinage borrowed only the literal sense of depth, so geologists using the term today are invoking a deep-rooted stone rather than any comedic collapse. Batholiths are plural in the ordinary way, since "batholith" is a regular noun ending in "-lith," and "batholiths" simply adds an "s" to the singular form.

Synonyms: plutons, granite masses