Tetrahedrite

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A mineral composed primarily of copper, iron, and antimony, known for its crystalline structure resembling a four-faced polyhedron; often found in hydrothermal veins and mined as an ore of copper and other metals
2. A naturally occurring sulfide mineral containing copper, antimony, iron, and sulfur arranged in a distinctive tetrahedral crystal form; commonly extracted for its copper content and studied in mineralogy
3. A complex metallic sulfide mineral featuring a characteristic tetrahedral shape, comprising mainly copper, antimony, and iron, typically sourced from mineral deposits for copper extraction

Etymology: Tetrahedrite is a mineral that owes its name to its crystal shape alone. Its crystals take the form of a tetrahedron, a solid with four triangular faces, and in 1845 mineralogists gave the mineral a name built from that geometry. The Greek "tetra" means four and "hedra" means seat or face, so the name simply describes a four-faced form. The name is a modern coinage rather than an ancient one, so the Greek roots were assembled by mineralogists to label a specimen type they had identified. Classical writers had no such word for this ore, and the term belongs entirely to the 19th-century science that catalogued minerals by their crystal forms.

Synonyms: gray copper ore, copper antimony sulfide