Diktytaxitic

I was wrapping up for the day today when this word popped into my head.

FYI, one of the things I love about geology is the language. We are a very "wordy" science; the original geologists back in the Victorian times spent most of their time describing stuff. It's only lately that we've gotten more quantitative like, well, real scientists.

Anyway, our basalts - and we have LOTS of basalts around here - tend to have this; it's...well, in Fuller (1931) this word describes "Microscopic (<2.0 mm), irregular intercrystalline voids and outlined by crystal faces of adjacent groundmass minerals" which simply means that the rock has lots of teeny holes in it, like this one:

The little white things, like the small triangular space at the bottom center? Holes. Voids; small spaces in the rock made during cooling from the hot hellbrew (magma, or lava in this case...)

Here's what it this "diktytaxitic texture" often looks like in hand:

Cool stuff, basalt.

Anyway, now you know about "diktytaxitic". Good luck next time you play Scrabble^TM!