Pyroclastic
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A rock mostly composed of rock fragments of volcanic origin.
"The basic volcanics are altered andesites, porphyritic diabases and andesites, and various pyroclastics."
- 1 Mostly composed of rock fragments of volcanic origin or comminuted during an eruption. not-comparable
"The word "ash" is not a very good one to include all the mechanical accompaniments of a subaerial or subaqueous eruption, since ash seems to be restricted to a fine powder, the residuum of combustion. A word is wanting to express all such accompaniments, no matter what their size or condition may be, when they are accumulated in such mass as to form beds of "rock." We might call them perhaps "pyroclastic materials," ..."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"The eruption produced pyroclastic flows – a mixture of hot gas, lava and other volcanic material – that traveled up to two kilometers from the volcano’s crater."
Etymology
From pyro- + clastic, from Ancient Greek πῦρ (pûr, “fire”), and κλαστός (klastós, “broken”).
Related phrases
More for "pyroclastic"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.