Word of the Day:
stalactite
What It Means
A secondary mineral deposit of calcium carbonate or another mineral, in shapes similar to icicles, that hangs from the roof of a cave.
Stalactite in Context
“There is the Hang Ken cave with its waterfalls spilling into large lagoons, shimmering goldlike mineral deposits and soaring columns created over thousands of years when stalactites hanging from the cave roof met stalagmite formations building from the cave floor.”
Did You Know?
From New Latin stalactītēs, from Ancient Greek σταλακτός (stalaktós, “dripping; dropping”) + Latin -ītēs (suffix with the sense ‘belonging to’ forming adjectives) (modelled after the names of stones ending in -ites). Σταλακτός (Stalaktós) is derived from σταλάσσειν (stalássein, “to drip; to let (something) drip”) + -τός (-tós, suffix forming adjectives denoting possibility from verbs).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: stalactite (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “stalactite.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stalactite. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
