Min. [ad. Gr. χλωρῖτις (Pliny), name of some green stone, f. χλωρός light green: see -ITE.] A name applied to certain green hydrous silicates of magnesia and alumina occurring in ancient rock-formations, and forming the characteristic ingredients of chlorite slate.
The name was taken as a specific one by Werner in 1789. In 1838 Von Kobell showed that Werner’s name included more than one species, and restricted it to the hexagonal chlorite of St. Gothard, from which he separated Ripidolite: various other species have since been established, as Penninite, Delessite, Leuchtenbergite, Clinochlore, Chloritoid, etc., and as ‘chlorite’ has thus become a vague popular term, Dana has given the name of Prochlorite to the St. Gothard mineral on which Werner founded the species.
[1601. Holland, Pliny, II. 626. Chlorites is a stone of a grasse green colour.]
1794. Kirwan, Min., 194. Chlorite is found in scales either investing other stones, or heaped together … feels greasy.
1807. Carne, in Phil. Trans., XCVII. 293. It is composed of shist, chlorite, and quartz.
1813. Bakewell, Introd. Geol. (1815), 41. Chlorite … is nearly allied to talc.
1854. H. Miller, Sch. & Schm., xiv. (1857), 297. It was encrusted over by a thin layer of chlorite, slippery as the mixture of soap and grease that the ship-carpenter spreads over his slips.
1876. Page, Adv. Text-bk. Geol., v. 104.
2. attrib., esp. in chlorite schist, slate, a green slaty rock, consisting of chlorite in foliated plates, often blended with quartz, felspar, or mica, and associated geologically with gneiss and clay-slate; chlorite spar, an old name of CHLORITOID.
1802. Playfair, Illustr. Hutton. Th., 12. Micaceous chlorite, hornblend, and siliceous schistus.
1813. Sir H. Davy, Agric. Chem., iv. (1814), 194. Chlorite Schist … consists of chlorite, a green or gray substance somewhat analogous to mica and feldspar.
1850. Daubeny, Atom. The., xii. (ed. 2), 409–11. Hydrosilicates…. Example: Chloritespar.
1854. Dana, Min., 298. Chlorite spar.
1863. Lyell, Antiq. Man, xv. (ed. 3), 298. Three varieties of granite, besides gneiss, chlorite-slate … serpentine.
1873. Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., XIII. 393. Chlorite rocks.
