Wehrlite
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A type of peridotite that is a mixture of olivine and clinopyroxene. countable, uncountable
"Even within a single massif the igneous suite may be highly variable and range in character from quartz-normative tholeiitic to under-saturated alkaline. Rock types include wehrlite, olivine pyroxenite and hornblendite; teschenite, eucrite, and olivine, hypersthene, and hornblende gabbros; diorite, trondhjemite, alkaline syenite, and granophyre; augite, hypersthene, and oligoclase basalts and dolerites; variolite and camptonite."
- 2 A naturally-occurring alloy of bismuth and tellurium, primarily Bi₂Te₃. countable, uncountable
"While tetradymite has been recorded in shallow settings (e.g., Boulder County belt), this mineral along with other bismuth tellurides like wehrlite, tellurbismuth, and so forth (see Thompson, 1949) seem to be most common in mesothermal and even more intense settings."
Example
More examples"Even within a single massif the igneous suite may be highly variable and range in character from quartz-normative tholeiitic to under-saturated alkaline. Rock types include wehrlite, olivine pyroxenite and hornblendite; teschenite, eucrite, and olivine, hypersthene, and hornblende gabbros; diorite, trondhjemite, alkaline syenite, and granophyre; augite, hypersthene, and oligoclase basalts and dolerites; variolite and camptonite."
Etymology
From Wehrle + -ite, after the Czech professor Alois Wehrle.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.