mineral
Pluralminerals
Pluralminerals
- 1A naturally occurring material, usually inorganic, with a fairly definite chemical composition and characteristic physical properties.
Geologists identified the mineral by its hardness and crystal structure.
Granite contains several different minerals, including quartz and feldspar.
Note
The scientist's sense, and the place where the word's history shows: Medieval Latin minerale, from minera, “ore”, probably from Latin mina, “ore, mine”. In geology a mineral is a species with its own composition, and a gem may be only one form of it. In Lee A. Groat's 2012 American Scientist article, emerald is a gem form of the mineral beryl. Rocks are made of minerals: granite is a rock, quartz a mineral.
- 2Any inorganic element, such as calcium, iron, or zinc, that the body needs for normal nutrition and health.
Nutrition labels list the vitamins and minerals in each serving.
Calcium is the mineral most people associate with strong bones and teeth.
Note
Nutrition borrows the word and narrows it to elements such as calcium, iron, zinc and iodine. It usually travels in the pair vitamins and minerals, and the pairing marks a real line: vitamins are organic compounds, while minerals are inorganic elements. A dietary mineral is not the geologist's mineral. The calcium in milk counts, though nobody would dig it from a rock.
- 3Connected with minerals, or containing minerals as part of its makeup.
The survey mapped the region's mineral wealth in detail.
A faint mineral smell rose from the wet stones after the rain.
- 4Any inorganic material, as distinguished from material of animal or vegetable origin.
Glass counts as mineral, since it is made from sand rather than living matter.
Customs officers recorded whether each shipment was of animal, vegetable, or mineral origin.
Note
The classifying sense, broader than the geologist's mineral: anything inorganic, set against animal and vegetable as the third of three kinds of matter. It asks only what a thing is not, neither alive nor grown. So a manufactured material can qualify, which the geological sense does not allow because it is limited to what occurs naturally. The phrase animal, vegetable or mineral keeps this meaning in everyday use.
- 5Water that naturally contains dissolved minerals and salts; in other words, mineral water.
The restaurant offered tap water or a bottle of sparkling mineral.
He filled his glass with chilled mineral from the spring at the hotel.
Note
A British clipping of mineral water, at home on menus and in casual ordering, as in “a sparkling mineral”. The word changes meaning abroad. In Ireland, South Africa and Nigeria it names a soft drink, so a British visitor who asks for a mineral there may be handed something sweet in a can. Saying “mineral water” in full removes any doubt.
- 6A soft drink, especially one sold as a single-serving bottle or can.
The cooler by the register was stocked with minerals in every flavor.
She handed each child a mineral and a straw before the movie started.
Note
An informal everyday word in Ireland, South Africa and Nigeria, used as a countable noun for one serving. A mineral is a single bottle or can, and a crate of minerals is drinks for a crowd. It carries no suggestion of water or health; it is simply the local name. Visitors from Britain, where the word means mineral water, are the ones likely to be surprised.
Less common meanings
- 7A mine, or a deposit of ore or other valuable material in the ground.
The surveyors reported a rich mineral of copper beneath the western hills.
O'er whom his very madness, like some ore / Among a mineral of metals base, / Shows itself pure;
c. 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”Note
Here the word names the ground the ore lies in, a meaning close to its Latin roots in “ore” and “mine”. Shakespeare uses it in Hamlet, where madness shows itself “like some ore / Among a mineral of metals base”: a precious vein shining out of a bed of lesser metal. Read with the modern meaning, the line blurs; read as “mine”, it sharpens. The sense is obsolete, met in reading rather than writing.
- 8A poisonous or otherwise dangerous substance, especially a harmful drug or potion.
Note
Early modern English could use the word for poison. In Othello it appears beside drug: the hero is accused of having “abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals.” The pairing is the clue, since both words point to substances someone might be secretly dosed with. Modern readers tend to hear rocks or nutrients instead. The sense is obsolete and now matters only for reading older texts.
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Practice
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Origin
From Middle English mineral, borrowed from Old French mineral, from Medieval Latin minerale, from minera ('ore'), probably ultimately from Latin mina ('ore, mine').