Onyx

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈɒnɪks/

Definitions

1. A hard, translucent to opaque variety of chalcedony, typically banded in contrasting colors, used in jewelry and decorative objects
2. A precious or semi-precious stone composed of silica minerals, characterized by layered bands of alternating colors and valued for ornamental carving and jewelry-making
3. A type of quartz gemstone displaying parallel stripes of contrasting hues, prized for its durability in decorative arts and adornment

Etymology: The Greek word "ónux" meant "fingernail" or "claw," and the gemstone got its name from a resemblance that is easy to see once pointed out. Many onyx stones show pale bands running across a darker background, and the layers look like the curved edge of a nail or the sheen on a claw. The Greeks applied the same word to both the mineral and the body part, so a stone was named after the nail of a human hand. The English form arrived through a long chain of borrowing. It appeared in Middle English as "onix" around 1300, after earlier spellings like "oniche" in the 1250s, and it came from Old French, which had taken the word from Latin "onyx." The Latin writers kept the Greek sense of the stone, so the gem's name travelled through three languages without changing meaning. Linguists also count "unguis," the Latin word for "fingernail," as a doublet of "onyx." Both descend from the same ancient root, so a stone and a fingernail share a common ancestor in Latin as well as in Greek.

Synonyms: gemstone, chalcedony, agate, stone, mineral