hornfels
hornfels noun: any of a series of contact metamorphic rocks that have been baked and indurated by the heat of intrusive igneous masses and rendered massive, hard, splintery, and in some cases exceedingly tough and durable.
Noun
hornfels (countable and uncountable, plural hornfelses or hornfels)
- Any of a series of contact metamorphic rocks that have been baked and indurated by the heat of intrusive igneous masses and rendered massive, hard, splintery, and in some cases exceedingly tough and durable.
Forms of hornfels
| plural | hornfelses |
|---|---|
| plural | hornfels |
Origin of hornfels
Borrowed from German Hornfels, literally "horn stone", after its frequent association with glacial "horn peaks" in the Alps.
Words formed from hornfels
Questions about hornfels
- What does hornfels mean?
- Hornfels means any of a series of contact metamorphic rocks that have been baked and indurated by the heat of intrusive igneous masses and rendered massive, hard, splintery, and in some cases exceedingly tough and durable.
- What part of speech is hornfels?
- Hornfels is a noun.
- What is the plural of hornfels?
- The plural of hornfels is hornfelses.
Words near hornfels in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hornfels (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-hornfels.ogg.
Cite this entry: “hornfels.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hornfels. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.