Word.ws English Dictionary

speleothems

speleothems is the plural of speleothem.

Meaning of speleothem

Noun

speleothem (plural speleothems)

  1. Any secondary mineral, deposited in a natural cave by the action of water. Includes formations such as stalactites, stalagmites, flowstones, and helictites.
    • But it is possible that the painting itself might be thousands of years older because the technique only assesses the age of a mineral deposit, speleothem, that formed on the cave walls.2021 January 13, Becky Ferreira, “Pig Painting May Be World’s Oldest Cave Art Yet, Archaeologists Say”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
    Synonyms:
    cave formation

Questions about speleothems

What is speleothems the plural of?
Speleothems is the plural of speleothem.

Words near speleothems in the dictionary

  1. speleonectid
  2. speleonectids
  3. speleophilic
  4. speleothem
  5. speleothemic
  6. speleothems
  7. speleotherapy
  8. speleotherm
  9. speleotherms
  10. spelican
  11. spelicans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: speleothems (page history and authors); speleothem (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: “speleothems.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/speleothems. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.