Word.ws English Dictionary

phytolith

phytolith noun: a small particle of silica or mineral that occurs in many plants.

phytolith: a small particle of silica or mineral that occurs in many plants
Image: Benjamin Gadet, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

phytolith (plural phytoliths)

  1. A small particle of silica or mineral that occurs in many plants.
    • Environmental archaeologist Monica Ramsey, at the University of Toronto, Canada, and her colleagues studied phytoliths – microscopic silica crystals that form in plant tissues – from the site.2016 October 29, “Sedges, not cereals, fed first settlers”, in New Scientist, number 3097, page 15

Forms of phytolith

pluralphytoliths

Origin of phytolith

From phyto- + -lith.

Words formed from phytolith

Questions about phytolith

What does phytolith mean?
Phytolith means a small particle of silica or mineral that occurs in many plants.
What part of speech is phytolith?
Phytolith is a noun.
What is the plural of phytolith?
The plural of phytolith is phytoliths.

Words near phytolith in the dictionary

  1. phytolatry
  2. phytolipid
  3. phytolipids
  4. phytolite
  5. phytolites
  6. phytolith
  7. phytolithic
  8. phytolithological
  9. phytolithologist
  10. phytolithologists
  11. phytolithology

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: phytolith (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.

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Cite this entry: “phytolith.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/phytolith. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.