lucullite

English

Etymology

From Lucullus (“a Roman consul, famous for his great wealth and luxury”) +‎ -ite. Compare French lucullite.

Noun

lucullite (countable and uncountable, plural lucullites)

1. (mineralogy, dated) A variety of black limestone, often polished for ornamental purposes.
   • 1835, The Athenaeum‎^[1]:

     He next characterized the different British limestones, with reference to the qualities peculiar to each, in the composition of mortars and cements, dividing them into the soft white limestones, such as chalk and oolite, the grey limestones, the bituminous limestones or lucullites, the magnesian limestones, and lastly those fitted for water cements, such as the grey chalk of Dorking, and the blue limestone of Aberthaw and Barrow, and the septaria of the London clay from which Roman cement is prepared, exhibiting specimens of each kind.

   • 1875, A Dictionary of Chemistry and the Allied Branches of Other Sciences‎^[2], volume 3, page 698:

     Compact lucullite is subdivided into common or black marble; and stinkstone.

   • 1883, Alexander Watt, The History of a Lump of Chalk: Its Family Circle, and Their Uses‎^[3], page 37:

     Lucullite, which also yields the odour of sulphuretted hydrogen on being rubbed, is found in Derbyshire and other parts of England, as also in Cork, Galway, and Kilkenny, in Ireland.

Synonyms

• Lucullan

Further reading

• “lucullite”, in Mindat.org‎^[4], Hudson Institute of Mineralogy, 2000–2024.