Nickeline

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A metallic mineral composed of nickel and arsenic, often found in ore deposits and also known as niccolite
2. A copper-red mineral of nickel arsenide that forms in hydrothermal veins and is valued as a source of nickel
3. An arsenide ore of nickel with a pale reddish metallic lustre, sometimes mined for the nickel it contains

Etymology: Nickeline is a mineral, and its name carries a German joke. Miners in the Erzgebirge region of Saxony found a reddish ore that looked like copper but yielded none, and they blamed a mischievous spirit called Nickel, a diminutive of Nikolaus. The metal they could not extract was named for that goblin, and the word eventually became the element nickel. The mineral name builds on that metal. Nickeline is formed from nickel with the suffix "-ine", a common ending in mineralogy used to name a substance or a material made of something. Here the suffix marks the mineral as a nickel-bearing ore, specifically nickel arsenide. The root traces back through "Nikolaus" to Greek "Nikolaos", combining "nike", meaning victory, with "laos", meaning people.

Synonyms: niccolite